


Alive Humanoid Sensory Euclid

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Hannibal (TV), SCP Foundation
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Body Horror, Explicit Sexual Content, Horror, M/M, Mindfuck, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:49:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2413928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: AU in which Will and Hannibal (and Jack) work for the SCP Foundation. (There is some helpful information about this in the introduction.) </p><p>This is also a fill for two prompts on the Hannibal kinkmeme:<br/>http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1847.html?thread=2051895#cmt2051895<br/>http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2246.html?thread=3145414#cmt3145414</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR’S NOTES:**

1\. This story is an AU that places Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter in the world of the SCP Foundation, a fictional collection of objects, humans, and extraterrestrial/extradimensional beings deemed a threat to global security or human normalcy. The SCP Foundation originated on 4chan’s /x/ board, where people would dig up pictures of weird things and write stories explaining what they were. Eventually the concept got [its own wiki](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/about-the-scp-foundation). You need not possess any prior knowledge of the Foundation before reading this story, but it might be helpful to visit a few pages there, to become familiar with the format and themes. (Here are some of my favorite entries, none of which are mentioned in this fic. Some are spooky, some are funny, and some are both: [381](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-381), [426](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-426), [1981](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1981), [294](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-294), [361](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-361), [147](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-147), [586](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-586), [597](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-597), [1370](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1370), [1839](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1839), [374](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-374), [1d6-J](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1d6-j) and [006-J](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-006-j).) Be warned that the SCP wiki has suction powers rivaled only by TV Tropes. Try to remember to actually come back and read this fic after browsing the wiki!

2\. I tried to explain things that needed explaining, but also deliberately left things to the reader’s imagination. (Which is the way the SCP wiki itself is written.)  Some events/discoveries described on the wiki have been dramatized in this fic. If you go to read the entire wiki entry for an SCP object as soon as it is mentioned, you might be spoiled for something that occurs in the story. So what I did was, I embedded “easter egg” links to objects mentioned in passing, so you can get more info about them if you wish. But if you see something mentioned for the first time and there is no embedded link, you can just continue to read the fic, and you’ll learn all you need to know about the object.

3\. There are many canonical secure facilities run by the Foundation, and each one tends to specialize in particular types of objects, or is located in a specific area to house an immovable object. I didn’t want to limit the story based on which items are housed in which facilities, so I made up a facility of an ambiguous nature and location, U-62, and moved any objects there that I desired, for story purposes.

 

*** Please be advised that this fic contains canon-typical content for both _Hannibal_ and the SCP Foundation. That means blood and guts, psychological horror, body horror, and occasional pauses for homoeroticism. I cannot be any more specific than that without spoilers, so please use your best judgment before proceeding. ***

   
  


**ONE**

It was assumed that this would be a low-risk retrieval, despite the fact that four people had died from the effects of the object. Each death had been attributed to dehydration, which took several days and indicated that whatever the thing was, it did not kill quickly. With a skilled retrieval team to look out for one another, it could likely be captured without incident.

Will Graham had been shoved into the Mobile Task Force van six minutes ago, and the team leader, Oshawa, now briefed him on the situation; aided by some photographs taken by the local police:

“This woman was found dead in the bedroom of her apartment. Dehydration, no evidence of foul play. Police report said no one had heard from her in five days. Not so bizarre, except that her mother and stepfather had died of apparent dehydration ten days previously, in comparably secure and isolated circumstances. Twelve days prior to that, the mother had found _her_ mother dead from dehydration in her attic, following the death of her husband…although his death was attributed to complications from diabetes, so we don’t think it’s related.”

“Any leads on whether it’s targeting women, specifically, or whether it might have something to do with the family line?” Information like that would not help Will locate the anomalous object, but knowing that either of those things were a crucial factor would make him feel a whole lot better about walking blindly into a dead woman’s house.

Oshawa shook his head. “It’s not unheard of for an SCP’s effectiveness to be dependent on gender or heredity, but it’s fairly unusual. In this case we suspect we’re dealing either with a cognitohazard that is compelling individuals to go without food or water, or a parasite that is actively dehydrating the victims. In either case, we’re equipped to deal with it.”

The van pulled up in front of an unremarkable house in a neighborhood typical of the kind that had sprung up in this part of the state, after the construction of an aqueduct system which facilitated a population boom. An additional vehicle pulled up and parked behind the van, an ordinary civilian car. The residents of this house were at work, and the van had “South County Plumbing” on the side, so their presence did not draw suspicion. Oshawa led the team quietly to the south side of the house, where he lifted the latch on the gate and proceeded to the pool house in the back.

The interior of the pool house seemed a perfectly typical residence for a woman in her twenties doing the best she could with mid-century modern construction: photographs and posters of rock bands covered most of the wood paneling, and the old kitchen fixtures were augmented by a toaster oven and a juicer. A Foundation agent had placed a few calls in the last forty-eight hours, to ensure that everything remained untouched, once the coroner had left with the tenant’s body.

It was a tiny little house, and Will’s head ached in every corner of it. But he found the pain particularly hard to bear in the front room, where, amongst the Ikea furniture and contemporary consumer electronics, he saw a large, empty cardboard box and several vintage items scattered around it: a jewelry box, a few animal-print polyester dresses, some old jazz LPs, and a table lamp. There was also a full-length mirror that looked like it had been recently brought in.

“If her mother and grandmother both died recently, my guess is that these items belonged to them,” Will said, waving to indicate the collection. He did not touch anything; it was too risky a task for him. Instead, two members of the MTF spread everything out on the little dining table, while Will moved back and forth, paying attention to the way his splitting headache became even more intense. But then the jewelry box was opened, and Oshawa said, “I think we found it.”

He held in his hand a single cigarette with the words “BLUE LADY” hand-written along its length.

One of the other members of the task force whined, “I got suited up for a Blue Lady cigarette? Fucking Christ. Dumb bitch probably blazed up thinking she’d found her grandma’s secret stash.” The man looked at Will like it was _his_ fault.

“Just go get a B3 containment unit from the van,” Oshawa said. “Don’t mind him,” he said to Will. “It’s just kind of like…well, you were a cop, right? It’s like getting called out on when a kid pranks 911: you gotta check up on it in case it’s really something serious, but when it’s not, you know…” and he flung up his hands for effect.

The rest of the MTF stood around while they waited for the containment unit to be brought in, though at this point they knew that their continued presence was just a formality. A Blue Lady cigarette wasn’t dangerous unless you consumed it. Anyone could have dropped it into the box without fear for their safety. At this point, they seemed more concerned with any titillating items of a personal nature that might have been left in view before the young woman had died, and their eyes darted about.

The whiny MTF member put the cigarette into the box with a sigh, sealed it, and walked back out to the van with it like he was carrying his wife’s purse. The rest of the MTF followed, but Will hung back; one of the team members of the MTF – Agent Halifax, presumably, as he also remained in the room – would drive Will back to the U-62 facility in the civilian car, so he would not have to endure a two-hour drive next to an SCP object. Will anticipated the relief that would come as the cigarette moved further away from him, but the pain behind his eyes remained just as sharp. He was about to say something, when Oshawa shouted, “Halifax! Let’s move it!”

Oshawa marched out of the little house, expecting that his order would be promptly obeyed, but Halifax said, “I can’t.”

Will looked over at Halifax, who was gazing intently at the full length mirror. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I can’t leave. It’ll kill him.”

Will walked over and looked into the mirror, which showed a reflection of himself and Halifax. Except Halifax’s reflection, and only his, was moving independently.

“When did this happen?” Will asked. “Just now?”

“No, I’m real!” the reflection said. “I’ve always been here!”

“It’s not real,” Will said. “Let’s go. Can you move?”

Halifax was able to avert his eyes from the mirror, and took a step away from it, but before his reflection could lose sight of him, it screamed, “Why are you telling him to kill me!?” Halifax froze and said, “See? I can’t.”

After observing Halifax’s reflection for a short while, Will noticed something else. His own reflection now moved independently of his actions. “He’s only trying to protect us,” it said, indicating Halifax’s reflection. “You have to stay close, or we’ll die.”

“What would Mom say, if you let us die?” Halifax’s reflection said to him. “Remember when you were seven, how angry she was when she found out you were pulling the back legs off grasshoppers? And those were just grasshoppers. She’d disown you if she found out you killed me.”

“Is that true?” Will said. “About the grasshoppers? How does it know that?”

“Look, this is not that big a deal,” Halifax reasoned. “All we have to do is stay here. That’s a small price to pay to save a life, isn’t it?”

Will rolled his eyes and took a step to the side, but the agonized whimpering, _in his own voice_ , gave him pause. Perhaps Halifax was right. The Foundation had resources; they could find a way to make it so they always stayed in front of the mirror…

Oshawa stomped back into the room, shouting, “Agent Halifax, I ordered you to—”

“Don’t come in,” Will snapped. “Stay right there, and don’t look into the room. There’s another SCP in here, and I think it’s memetic.”

“God damn it,” Oshawa muttered. “Agent Halifax, if you don’t step away from that mirror right now, you’re demoted to D-class.”

“Don’t listen to that guy!” Halifax’s reflection begged. “He wants to kill us! Don’t let him kill us!” Will’s reflection chimed in, its pleas just as shrill and earnest, and Will felt a flash of sympathy, something more urgent than guilt. It was more like his own sense of self-preservation was being triggered.

But he could not hang onto the feeling for long. Already his head hurt like a bastard, and all the screaming and shouting was not helping him one bit; all he could think of was how he could make it stop. “Calm down, both of you,” Will said, and then, more softly, “Stop screaming, please. Now listen, I’m going to step back a little bit. I’ll stay where you can see me, but it hurts me to be too close. You must know that.”

His reflection nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I know. Okay. But you’re not going anywhere, right?”

Will stepped backwards, until his leg bumped the corner of the futon. “Of course not,” he insisted, which seemed to soothe both the men in the reflection and Halifax himself.

Then, with lightning speed, Will yanked the blanket off the futon and flung it over the mirror. The moment their reflections lost sight of Will and Halifax, they began to scream in agony, and Will caught sight of a turbulent disintegration in the one corner of the mirror that remained uncovered.

“What the fuck just happened?!” Halifax said. “Oh God, what have you done?” But then he seemed to calm down somewhat, and when the screaming finally ended he said, as if waking from a daze, “Were they real?”

“No,” Will said gravely, “they weren’t real.”

“Wow. I must look like a real sucker right now.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry about it.”

Oshawa was utterly lacking in sympathy. “Halifax, go bring in the C3 containment unit from the van,” he said. “And try not to look at anything else too hard while you’re doing it.”

“Sir,” Halifax said, and trotted out of the room.

Oshawa approached Will, looking at the covered, and now presumably harmless, mirror. “That was quite a thing you did, Agent Graham,” he said. “You’re a worthy addition to any Mobile Task Force. Where the hell did you find the nerve?”

“I don’t know,” Will shrugged, staring forlornly at the covered mirror, which was still giving him a massive headache. “I must just be completely lacking in empathy.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Item #:** SCP-3387

 **Object Class:** Euclid

 **Special Containment Procedures:** Staff are encouraged to address SCP-3387 with normal social pronouns in documentation and conversation.

SCP-3387 resides at 1138 Oak Street in the dedicated U-62 facility staff residential zone. He has a special security grade (Class F: Retrieval Specialist), allowing him Level 4 access to all research labs, records storage, and communal social areas. SCP-3387 is sensitive to the presence of other anomalous objects, so if it becomes necessary to confine him to the facility itself, he should be assigned a standard humanoid containment chamber at least 50m from any other SCP object.

SCP-3387 has been issued a mobile phone, and is expected to keep it on his person and switched on at all times, so that he can be notified immediately when he is needed for object retrieval. As a salaried employee, SCP-3387 is responsible for purchasing his own food and household goods at the U-62 Post Exchange, but he should be provided with any other reasonable requested personal item or home furnishing that the Post Exchange does not stock, so long as it does not violate standard Foundation security protocols.

SCP-3387 has had a tracking device implanted, so his whereabouts may always be known. He understands that he must be in his home from 10 PM until 6 AM daily, unless he has been authorized by Administrator Jack Crawford to accompany a Mobile Task Force to a retrieval. At other times, he must remain within 10km of U-62. The tracking device is monitored at random intervals, and security staff will be alerted if he is in an unauthorized location. He is not a flight risk, but his abilities make him a target for abduction by rival organizations.

 **Discovery:** On ██/██/████, the manager of the ███████ Building (20-unit residential building) placed a call to 911, who dispatched two officers from the ███ ███████ Police Department, one of whom was Detective Will Graham. The building manager claimed that he had opened unit ██ after the resident of that unit had not paid rent for two months, and had inadvertently discovered the corpse of the resident and [SCP-543](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-543).

When Detective Graham filed his report, he noted that as he approached unit ██, he had been overcome with a sudden headache, which went away after leaving the building. Graham suggested that a gas leak might be to blame.

Two months later, on ██/█/████, Detective Graham filed a report on a homicide committed with an object that turned out to be [SCP-063](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-063). Graham again noted that he had a headache whenever SCP-063 happened to be in the room with him. Agent █████, a deep cover Foundation agent who at the time was embedded in the ███ ███████ Police Department, noted this supposed coincidence and approached Detective Graham several times over the next three weeks and, having become sufficiently confident that Detective Graham had a sensitivity to SCPs, recruited him into the Foundation’s employ.

 **Description:** SCP-3387 is Will Graham, a Caucasian male, born ██/█/████, 1.78m tall, 71kg, with brown hair and blue eyes. The only thing that distinguishes him from an ordinary human being is his ability to perceive the presence of objects or living beings with anomalous properties (hereafter “SCP objects”) within 30m of himself. When his proximity to an SCP object reaches 30m, SCP-3387 will feel a slight tingling behind his eyes, as with the beginning of a headache. As his proximity reaches 10m, the sensation will intensify, and being within 1m of an SCP object is moderately painful to him. This sensation is not dependent on the size of the object or the nature of the anomaly. For example, a homicidal humanoid 2.3m in height will not cause more intense sensations than a six-sided die that induces mild melancholy in one who holds it, assuming comparable distance.

When SCP-3387 moves farther from an SCP object, the sensation dissipates. Proximity to SCP objects does not cause SCP-3387 lasting pain or damage, and no physical changes take place during or after the use of his ability. He has been exposed to SCP objects while in an MRI machine, and no change in brain activity is indicated. (See Addendum 3387-A, testing log, for more details.) However, being subject to the headaches, coupled with the dangers inherent in close proximity to SCP objects, causes SCP-3387 considerable stress. For this reason, he should be assigned retrieval duty only when no other means are available to effectively locate and capture SCP objects, or in situations involving dangerous objects where location and retrieval must be expedited.

Please note that SCP-3387 can only detect the presence of SCP objects in his vicinity. He cannot identify their anomalous properties or communicate telepathically with them in any way.

SCP-3387’s ability does not protect him from the physical or memetic effects of exposure to SCP objects, and he is subject to all standard monitoring and quarantine procedures.

 

 **Document 3387-A:** Testing Log for SCP-3387’s abilities

During these tests, the only objects within 50m of SCP-3387 were those used for testing.

\- SCP-3387 is shown four identical blue keys on a table. He is able to identify which one is [SCP-860](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-860).

\- SCP-3387 is taken to a junkyard in █████████, ██ and told he is looking for an SCP object. He is not given any description of the object. SCP-3387 wanders for 8 minutes, then walks a more-or-less spiral route until he correctly identifies [SCP-462](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-462).

\- SCP-3387 is allowed to walk freely in a 110m2 room, empty and featureless except for [SCP-528](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-528) in the center of the room. He is instructed to familiarize himself with the intensity of his headaches in relation to his proximity to the object. He is then blindfolded. SCP-528 is moved to a random location in the room, and SCP-3387 is walked slowly around the room and asked to estimate his distance from SCP-528 at any given time. SCP-3387 can determine how close he is within an error margin of .5m.

\- Above test is repeated, but with [SCP-099](SCP-099), which is covered by a sheet. He again estimates his proximity within .5m. When quarantined and observed afterwards, he demonstrates no evidence of suffering the memetic effects of SCP-099, indicating that his ability has no telepathic component.

\- Above test is repeated, but with [SCP-247](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-247) (caged) in the room. He again estimates his proximity within .5m. He is removed from the room without being told which SCP was present, and when interviewed afterward demonstrates no anxiety, indicating that he cannot perceive the hazardous nature of an SCP, only its presence.

\- SCP-3387 is placed outside of occupied containment chambers constructed from stone, tungsten, steel, a Faraday cage, and wood. His ability remains just as intense and accurate, regardless of the nature of the barrier or its thickness.

\- SCP-3387 is given the following mind-altering substances, then asked if he can perceive nearby SCP objects.

█/███/████: Alcohol (110 mL of whiskey, sufficient quantity for subject to experience a hangover the following day)  
██/█/████: Diazepam  
██/█/████: Fetanyl  
██/███/████: Nitrous oxide  
██/███/████: Carbon tetrachloride  
██/███/████: Morphine  
█/█/████: Acetylsalicylic acid  
█/█/████: Acetaminophen

Results: Substances which mitigate headaches, or which reduce anxiety, do not compromise SCP-3387’s ability. Substances which induce headaches (such as excessive alcohol consumption) mask the effect of this ability to an extent, i.e., if he is experiencing an ordinary mild headache, and comes within close proximity of an SCP object, the headache will suddenly become more intense as his ability takes over the already-existing pain).

[FURTHER EXPERIMENTAL LOGS REDACTED FOR BREVITY]

 

 **Document 3387-B:** **List of personal items SCP-3387 has requested**

\- Fishing gear (granted)  
\- Fly-tying gear (granted)  
\- Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (denied)  
\- Stray mixed-breed dog, found on road (granted)  
\- Stray mixed-breed dog, found near river (granted)  
\- Stray labradoodle dog, found on road (granted)  
\- Stray mixed-breed dog, wandered into his yard (granted)  
\- Terrier dog, owned by Agent ████, deceased (granted)  
\- German shepherd dog, owned by Agent ████████, who relocated to Site 19 (granted)  
\- Stray mixed-breed dog, found on road (granted)

 

 **Document 3387-C:** **List of items for which SCP-3387 has had a vital role in location and retrieval**

[DATA REDACTED FOR BREVITY]

 

 **Document 3387-D:** **List of LOW-VALUE items for which SCP-3387 has had a vital role in location and retrieval**

SCP-3387’s ability means that he can detect any SCP that he is in close proximity to, not just those that present a threat to global security. This is a list of items categorized as “low value” and not assigned an SCP number, all of which are currently housed in the low-value storage wing at U-62:

Item Description: An analogue watch that syncs up with the wearer's heartbeat, making it useless at telling time.  
Date of Recovery: █-█-████  
Location of Recovery: ███████, ████, United Kingdom  
  
Item Description: A hamster that will speak in plain English, but only when directly asked a question about its opinions on popular music.  
Date of Recovery: ██-██-████  
Location of Recovery: ███████, ███████  
Notes: _I don’t give a [REDACTED] what the hamster says, Coldplay are really good, and he needs to learn to deal with it. - Site Director_ █████ █████  
  
Item Description: A photo of a man. He is wearing a tie. He is not tall or short, not thin or fat. He has eyes like yours, and a nose like yours, and hair like yours, but you do not think he is you.  
Date of Recovery: █-██-████  
Location of Recovery: █████ ████  
  
Item Description: A quilt that causes the person who sleeps underneath it to dream about being a quilt.  
Date of Recovery: █-█-████  
Location of Recovery: ██ ████, ██  
  
Item description: A bottle of wine with a vintage of 202█. It tastes like the seeds and leaves of grapes, of soil, water, and sunshine. Instead of getting one drunk, it induces clarity.   
Date of Recovery: █-█-████  
Location of Recovery: ███████, CA, USA  
  
Item Description: A Maxell 90-minute audio cassette which, when placed in any cassette player, will play A-Ha’s entire discography, which totals nine hours and twenty-eight minutes.  
Date of Recovery: █-██-████  
Location of Recovery: ███████, Norway  
Notes: _These guys are actually pretty awesome. I’d only ever heard that one song. – Dr Bright  
Did you ask that [REDACTED] hamster what HE thinks? - Site Director_ █████ █████


	3. Chapter 3

For purposes of today’s testing, the interrogation room was divided in half by a thick, opaque curtain. From where Doctor Lecter was sitting, in the adjacent observation chamber, he had a perfect view of both sides of the curtain. On one side, on a pedestal, sat a bronze head with silver eyes, sculpted in the Roman style and covered with a distinguished layer of verdigris. On the other side, a Class D subject, in this case D-044323, was currently being restrained in a chair, so that he would have no choice but to face the bronze head directly when it came time for the curtain to drop.

Frame, the researcher assigned to the bronze head, sat beside Doctor Lecter in the observation chamber, and an assistant stood behind them, taking notes and monitoring the recording equipment.

Doctor Lecter waited patiently, until the security guard had double-checked D-044323’s restraints and exited the room, closing and locking the door behind him. Glancing at the closed-circuit monitors, Doctor Lecter saw the guard standing at attention on the other side of the door, awaiting further orders.

“Let’s begin,” Doctor Lecter said. “This is SCP-146, and we are opening Experiment Log 146-01.” Hannibal recited the date, time, and staff members present, then said, “Can we have the curtain down, please.”

The assistant pulled a lever, and the curtain in the interrogation room dropped; now, nothing could shield D-044323’s eyes from the stolid, silver gaze of the bronze head. Only a moment of eye contact was needed before D-044323 turned away with a whimper.

Doctor Lecter pressed the intercom button and said, “Can you tell us why you are upset?”

“I don’t want to remember that!” was all D-044323 said at first. His eyes were tightly shut, though he opened them once more, just to check and see if the head was still staring at him. He tried to flinch away when he saw that he was indeed still being scrutinized.

“Please relate the memory you are currently experiencing,” Doctor Lecter said.

D-044323 did not reply immediately, and the assistant filled in the silence: “Subject’s heart rate has increased to one hundred and forty eight beats per minute,” she said. “Blood pressure is one hundred and sixty over one hundred and five.”

“D-044323, please relate the memory you are currently experiencing,” Doctor Lecter repeated.

“I had to do it. I didn’t want to.” D-044323 struggled uselessly against the straps that held him, the veins on his arms standing out from the strain. “In the joint you can’t be perceived as weak. It was him or me.”

“Subject’s heart rate has increased to one hundred and sixty beats per minute.” The assistant sounded worried now. She took a step forward, watching Doctor Lecter’s face for any indication that he wanted the experiment to be halted. When he gave no such signal, she went on, “Blood pressure is one hundred and sixty-three over one hundred and eight.”

“D-044323, please relate the memory you are currently experiencing,” Doctor Lecter repeated.

Under the gaze of the bronze head, the D-044323 was now sobbing. Having failed to free himself through force of will, he slumped in the chair, and moaned pitifully: “It’s not my fault…It’s what happens in there. It happened to me, my first night,” he wheezed. “They told me, ‘Little fish, you ain’t never gonna be the same,’ and they were right. God, they were right…”

“Subject’s heart rate is down to eighty beats per minute,” the assistant said. “Blood pressure is one forty over ninety.”

Doctor Lecter watched with interest, as D-044323’s speech slowed and slurred, in the fashion of one under therapeutic hypnosis. He had a look at the monitor. “Can we have camera three zoom in on his eyes, please? Look at that, Doctor Frame. Eye movement consistent with REM sleep.” He turned to the assistant. “Is the subject on the Alpha Theta border?”

The assistant had trouble taking her eyes off the subject, who was weeping and incoherent, but she looked from the observation window to the EEG monitor, and confirmed Doctor Lecter’s suspicion. “Seven point nine hertz,” she reported.

“Make a note: One-Four-Six may be a good candidate for Theta-level mind programming.”

“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” D-044323 slurred. “I’d do anything to take it back. Forgive me. Please, please, forgive me.” He continued to mumble, “Wait, stop, no, stop, no please, not again, I--” Then his voice trailed off into nothing, and he was still, save for a slight twitching of his hands and one foot.

“Subject’s heart rate is forty beats per minute,” the assistant said. She checked the EEG again, and said, “Appears to be comatose.”

The research team watched D-044323 for several minutes, but nothing more occurred. The bronze head sat placidly on its pedestal; no change in it had been observed. At last, Doctor Lecter pushed the button to summon the guard into the room. “Have him taken to the infirmary for observation, please. And send in the next Class D, if you will.” The guard nodded, and put his walkie-talkie to this mouth, to call for orderlies. Doctor Lecter turned to Frame. “I’d be very interested to see what happens when we introduce this object to someone who has carried out [Procedure 110-Montauk](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-231).”

 

*****

 

One of the three light bulbs over Will’s bathroom sink had been burnt out since he’d moved into the house. He remembered, while he was brushing his teeth in the morning, that yesterday he had finally bought a replacement for it. He went and got it off the dining table, along with a screwdriver. Kneeling on the counter, he unscrewed the fixture and put the new light bulb in. He averted his eyes from the new brightness, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He hadn’t noticed it before, probably because he hadn’t looked at himself under this kind of light in a long time, but God, he looked like hell. His job took a constant toll on him, it wasn’t like he could forget that, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he might be showing it on the outside, not just on the inside. He’d worked for the Foundation for just five months, and he looked like he’d aged five years.

But, he’d never gotten anything in this world with his looks, and he didn’t intend to start trying, so he supposed it didn’t matter much. He got dressed and whistled for the dogs to come in from the back yard, so that he could head out.

He hadn’t been summoned for a retrieval mission. Jack Crawford had scheduled him for an ordinary meeting, though in the last several months, the word “ordinary” had lost much of its meaning. The fact that Jack wouldn’t specify the nature of the meeting didn’t even make him nervous; he just found it annoying.

Will had no need of a car. “Going to work” either meant getting picked up at potentially any hour of the day by a facility driver and rushed to a retrieval, or else simply walking four and a half blocks to an unassuming little utility shed at the end of his street, whose interior consisted entirely of an elevator which would take him down to the Administration level of the facility.

The Admin level was the only part of the facility that did not give Will a miserable migraine, but there were still a few SCP items here and there to annoy him: mainly trinkets that doctors and researchers kept on their desks, but also a few “friendly” humanoids. [SCP-030](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-030) was very kind, and if he knew Will would be around, or saw him down the corridor, he would make himself scarce. Others were not so considerate.

Will was a little early, so he went to the break room to get some coffee, and was overcome with a dull ache behind his eyes. Doctor Watson was standing next to the sink, looking down with exasperation at [SCP-2218](http://archiveofourown.org/works/653136?view_full_work=true), who had crawled halfway into the cupboard under the counter, muttering something about needing _all_ the plastic forks he could find.

Will squinched his eyes shut, save for the sliver of sight he needed to pour his coffee. He heaved a great sigh, and Doctor Watson turned his way.

“You alright, mate?”

Will grimaced and nodded in 2218’s direction. “Your boyfriend gives me a headache.”

Doctor Watson laughed contritely. “He gives _you_ a headache? Last week he almost got me vaporized on a quiz show.”

SCP-2218 drew himself out of the cupboard and fixed Will with a withering gaze. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Special Agent Graham?”

“Like a proper containment cell?” Will sneered, and strode out, coffee in hand. The last thing he heard was Doctor Watson saying, “What was that supposed to—”

Will made his way to Jack’s office, finding the door open, which it hadn’t been five minutes before. But when he walked in, he saw that another man was already sitting across from Jack.

“Excuse me,” Will said. “I’ll just be right outside when you’re done.”

“No, come in.” Jack gestured to the empty chair. “Will, this is Doctor Hannibal Lecter. He’s on the Ethics Committee, representing the Department of Humanoid Psychology. Doctor Lecter, this is Special Agent Will Graham.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Will. I’ve heard much about your invaluable contributions to the Foundation.” Hannibal stood to greet Will. Will shook Hannibal’s hand when it was proffered, but said nothing as he sat down. He was struck by how immaculate the man looked: the facility had a dress code, more or less, and the Admin staff wore jackets and ties, but most of them were gaunt, haggard. And deathly pale, even the ones with above-ground quarters who got to see sunlight on occasion. Hannibal was tan, hale, unruffled if not serene, and his suit was tailored for a man of his exact proportions, not a man who had once been larger or smaller, before the job had driven him to a diet of either entirely vending machine food or entirely coffee.

“Doctor Lecter is going to be shadowing you on a few of your retrieval missions,” Jack explained, trying to inject the slightest cheer into the statement, which immediately made Will suspicious.

“Shadowing me?” Will took another look at Hannibal. “Do you have an ability like mine?”

“I do not,” Hannibal said. “But since your work was brought to my attention, I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what it must be like to have your ability. I imagine it is an uncomfortable gift.”

“It’s not fun, but I do what I have to do, and it saves lives.”

Though Hannibal’s did not seem to have moved a muscle of his face, Will felt like his expression had changed dramatically, from cordial to deadly serious. “But do those abstract saved lives that you imagine truly comfort you,” Hannibal said, his tone and cadence almost hypnotizing, “when you are faced with the very real monsters that you track down? Other Foundation staff, whose perception is limited to the horrors that they manage day to day, can soothe themselves with the illusion that all the dangerous objects that they are aware of are safely contained. But you have no such illusion. Being aware of how many of these objects are still out there in the world must touch everything in your mind: your values, your perception of good and evil, your will to carry on living. You have no effective barriers between you and this unfathomably harsh reality we inhabit.”

Will gazed at Hannibal through this speech, first with bewilderment, then disgust. “You’re not accompanying me on field missions so you can help capture SCPs, are you?” Though he continued addressing Hannibal, he turned to Jack, to stare accusingly. “You’re monitoring me to make sure I’m not in danger of going berserk.”

Hannibal’s tone remained placid. “Ideally, I will ultimately do both.”

Jack tried to talk over this reply, as he knew it was not what Will wanted to hear. “The Ethics Committee is concerned about the effect that the job is having on you.”

“So they’re giving me a shrink chaperone to make sure that being the Foundation bloodhound won’t make my head explode, possibly literally.”

Jack inclined his head and raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, yes. I think you’re putting it a bit coarsely, but that is essentially what they’re doing.”

“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”

“Because I figured you’d take it about as well as you are taking it right now. Will, listen: if you had chronic heartburn, we would have a physician take a look at you, to ensure that you were in the best possible physical health, and you wouldn’t object to that, would you? So why object to us looking after your mental health?"

Will snapped, “You wanna know what’s really bad for my mental health?” He turned to Hannibal, as if looking for sympathy, and said: “I’m not allowed to take a sidearm with me into the field. It’s always a dozen guys in flak jackets with rocket launchers, and me, as fully armed and heavily armored as I am at this moment.”

“Because that is not your job,” Jack said. “You locate these objects, you identify them, and then you get back in the van. You are not authorized to terminate.”

“I’m not asking for an RPG, but can I at least have a thirty-eight? For when I have to track down a crazed junkie who can teleport?”

“Do you think I’d give you a sidearm after what—” Jack stopped suddenly, and his expression suggested that he had been about to say something he ought not to have said in the present company. “After what happened last year? It was before your time here, but all you need to know is, an agent accompanied an MTF into the field, carrying a sidearm, and it was supposed to be a routine capture, but the agent panicked and fired at an ectoentropic SCP, and it nearly caused an XK-class scenario. There was a media blackout, but then Freddie Lounds heard about it and showed up,” he muttered. “And that in itself is practically an XK-class scenario.”

“Will.” Hannibal waited until Will looked his way again. “I don’t want to be your enemy. I want to do whatever I can to help you. Not for the good of the Foundation, but for _your_ good.”

“Did you know,” Will said, smirking, “I have actually have _two_ gifts? The other one’s not in my file. It’s the ability to detect bullshit—”

Jack held up one hand. “That’s enough, Will. You’re dismissed.”

Will stalked out of the room like he was happy to do it, though he couldn’t help but cringe to think of what further discussion would take place on the subject of him, after he’d gone.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Will was jarred awake just before dawn by the klaxon on his phone, which indicated a message from Jack. He snatched up the phone and read the message with bleary eyes: “CONTAINMENT BREACH. STAND BY FOR RETRIEVAL INSTRUCTIONS.” 

Groggy and sullen, Will got dressed, went into the kitchen, and unwrapped a cereal bar. Three bites in, he got another message: “BE READY AT 0510 FOR PICKUP.” He bolted the rest of the bar and went out to wait for the van. He had a minute and a half to breathe in the cool air and look at the touch of purple near the horizon in the east, before an oversized black van came careening around the corner and screeched to halt in front of his house. It was unmarked, and painted the same color as just about every other van owned by the Foundation, but Will still recognized it as one belonging to Mobile Task Force Beta-7, who handled biohazard SCPs. It was too early in the morning for Will to react to this with anything more than a put-upon sigh, as the rear doors swung open and two men already in powder-blue biohazard suits lifted him bodily into the van. 

The leader of MTF B-7 was a man named Allenby. Whilst two other men helped Will into his suit, Allenby shouted over the road noise, “It’s your friend [Vector](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-353)!” 

“Shit,” said Will. 

“Aerial recon tracked her to an industrial park twenty miles north. There was no way she could have gotten that far that fast without hitching a ride, and God only knows what she gave the driver. There’s another team out looking for him. As for the warehouses, civilian losses are gonna be minimal – the day shift hadn’t arrived yet when we quarantined the place. But there’s too many people left in there to find her with thermographics.” 

Allenby went on to describe the layout of the industrial park, while Will sat down and got the helmet of the suit situated. “And what’s all this again?” he asked, pointing at his utility belt. “It’s been a while.” 

“Mace, flashlight, net launcher, restraints,” Allenby said, pointing to each pouch and holster. 

“How about a gun?” Will said, only half-joking. 

“Crawford wants strictly non-lethal methods of capture. She’s a keeper, I know you love that.” 

Will’s peripheral vision was so drastically reduced by the helmet that it wasn’t until he turned his head ninety degrees to the right that he realized that Doctor Lecter was seated next to him, also suited up. 

“Are you seriously job-shadowing me for _this_?” Will said. 

“I would hardly be able to determine the effects of this work on your mental health if I only accompanied you on low-risk retrievals,” Hannibal said. “I will try to stay out of your way, and not upset you.” 

“You don’t upset me. I’m _upset_ at Jack. You’re just trying to do your job…like I’m just trying to do mine.” 

Will had hoped he’d made clear that he was not interested in chit-chat, but if Hannibal had picked up on that, he was unconcerned about it. “What did Allenby mean,” he asked, “when he said Vector was your friend?” 

“I caught her the first time,” Will said, “after she flung Marburg like confetti all over Dresden. Doctor Wake recommended she be drugged to the gills and her system flushed. But O-5 shut him down; they want her as she is, for research purposes. I told Wake it wouldn’t matter anyway. She’s obviously a woman on a mission, and if she ever got loose, she’d just start collecting diseases all over again.” 

“You thought they should terminate her.” 

“If she’d shot one person to death in South Carolina with an ordinary gun, she’d get the electric chair. Instead she’s killed a thousand people, but it’s in a _weird_ way, so the Foundation does everything in its power to keep her alive.” 

“Alright, listen up!” Allenby shouted, as the van pulled into the parking lot of the industrial park, only half-visible under the plastic dome. “The night shift have been told they’re on lockdown because a bomb threat was called in. These are all windowless buildings, so they haven’t seen the quarantine tent. But when they see you guys in your suits, they are going to flip their shit. First order of business is to corral the civilians in any building that Agent Graham enters in pursuit of Vector. If you need to restrain them, do so, but do not use lethal force. Do not answer any questions and do not allow them to leave the building you find them in. Now, one more very important thing.” Allenby held up a photograph of a brunette in her twenties. “Vector will likely disguise herself as one of the night shift, so keep an eye out among the uniformed employees. This is the woman you are looking for. If you see her: mace her, cuff her, tranq her, so we can get her in a suit.” 

The rear doors opened, and the MTF poured out of the van, Will and Hannibal last. They passed through the staging area of the quarantine tent, where assistants hooked up their oxygen tanks and sealed their suits, and into the park, where rows of warehouses promised to make their pursuit a challenge. 

Will began at the southwest corner, circling each building, with Hannibal at his side and the MTF following closely behind. He explained to Hannibal that one advantage of his ability was that it often prevented more disturbance than necessary: had he not been present, to sense Vector from a distance, the MTF would have had to kick down every door in the complex. 

“Granted,” he said with a shrug, “in this instance every civilian under the dome will still have to be quarantined for weeks and dosed with Class B amnestics.” 

Hannibal remarked, “But there’s no need for _all_ of them to be sent into a panic by bio-suited cowboys with a taste for the dramatic, hm?” 

Ten minutes of thoroughly unexciting walking followed, as Will circled each warehouse in turn, feeling nothing unusual coming from inside the first three. He continued moving north, and as he approached the fourth building, something stung him behind his eyes. In defiance of every instinct, he moved forward, toward the pain. As he kept walking, the pain faded slightly, but even as he turned the corner, it remained with him. 

Now that he was certain, he turned to the left and gestured to the MTF that Vector was inside this building. They continued following him around the exterior wall, past a row of loading bays, all shut, until they reached an ordinary door.

“Listen,” Will said to Hannibal, “if you’re gonna be hanging over my shoulder, do me a favor at least, and help be my eyes. I can’t see a thing in this—” Will turned his head to the right, and found that Hannibal was no longer at his side. 

“Well, good,” he muttered to himself, and waved at the MTF to go on ahead of him and enter the building. 

Peering past them, Will did not see any civilians in the loading dock, which was a relief. The MTF checked behind the six-foot-high palettes and the steel shelving, and everyone in turn gave the all-clear signal. With no civilians to herd, the MTF stood aside and let Will do his thing. 

Will took a deep breath and focused on the pain in his head. As he walked slowly toward the center of the dock, the pain became more intense. He turned and paced from one side of the room to the other, feeling where the pain became greater or lesser. The fluctuations seemed random, which he’d had a problem with many times in the past, especially with ambulatory SCPs. Vector was moving around, so it was hard to get a lock on her. But she had no special camouflage abilities, so it was only a matter of time. Will gestured to Allenby, first with the flat of his hand and then pointing in an arc, to indicate that she was likely in the next room, or at least somewhere on the other side of the west wall. 

Allenby nodded and led the MTF through the swinging double doors and into the next room. Will waited for them to lock it down; this time he definitely heard the voices of panicked civilians, but not the scuffling and impact-noises that would indicate that they’d found Vector. 

When it sounded like the civilians were suitably pacified, Will moved to pass through the doors, but the pain in his head intensified suddenly, and he hung back. He hadn’t moved in ninety seconds, but Vector was definitely getting closer. Will’s skin tingled as he began to panic and sweat. Was she outside, approaching one of the exterior walls? 

Or had she been in the room all along, and he had missed her, in his peripheral-obscuring helmet? Will did a 360-degree turn, scanning for a hint of a human presence. Then he cursed himself, when his eyes came to rest on the service elevator he was standing next to. _Shit._

He shouted for the MTF, but it was too late. The elevator doors opened, and a woman in an ill-fitting khaki uniform sprang out, a boxcutter in each hand. She slashed at the air, a hair’s breadth from perforating Will’s biohazard suit, and his muscle memory took over: he reached for the holster at his right side, and the next thing he knew, Vector was standing motionless before him, and something he held in his hand was penetrating her throat. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled the implement back, and a six-inch blade slipped from underneath her chin, accompanied by a spurt of blood across Will’s visor, and Vector collapsed, lifeless. Then Will’s vision went black, and he followed her to the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

When his eyes half-opened, the bright light made Will turn his head, and against his cheek he felt crisp but coarse cotton fabric. He was not in his own bed. He saw Hannibal there at his bedside, holding a book but looking like he’d been gazing at Will for a long while. 

“Welcome back,” he said. 

“Where am I,” Will rasped, his throat dry and his mouth feeling nasty. “How long was I out.” 

“You’re in the infirmary. You’ve been here for two days.” There was a pitcher on the bedside table; Hannibal poured some water from it into a paper cup, and offered it to him. “I imagine you’re thirsty.” 

Will propped himself on one elbow, reached for the cup with his other hand, and shakily brought it to his lips. He drank it all in three big swallows and handed the cup back. “Did Vector get me?” 

“No. Don’t you remember? You killed her, with the [Complete Multitool](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-117). That’s why you lost consciousness. In order to manifest the blade, the Multitool absorbed the metals and minerals in your body, and you fainted.” 

“Shit. I remember now. I reached for my sidearm. I didn’t even know the knife was there.” Will became suddenly alert, and looked down at himself, even at his wrists, though he’d already been moving his arms freely. “Why am I not strapped to this bed? They’re gonna bump me up to Keter for what happened.” Will was in a panic now, babbling to Hannibal. “I swear, I didn’t know the knife was there. It was just muscle memory that made me reach for something. I was in fear for my life.” 

“Will. Calm down.” Hannibal rose from his chair and leaned over Will, pressing a firm but gentle hand to his shoulder to lay him back down. The hand traveled up, and cupped the side of Will’s face. “No one suspects foul play. The knife had been secure since before your arrival here. No one had accessed the storage container. The Administration is confident that it was something to do with the containment breach, some mischief by another SCP. It may have even been the knife’s own doing. There are new tests being run, to determine if it has the ability to teleport autonomously, when it’s needed. And it _was_ sorely needed, wasn’t it?” 

Relieved, Will nodded, and said. “It was. Jesus, if she’d cut my suit…I don’t want to think about it.” 

Hannibal sat back down, let his shoulders relax. “You don’t have to.” 

Why do we even keep SCPs like her around?” Will snapped. “Fucking Doctor Vara: ‘Oh, we can’t terminate her, she’s got the original 1918 Spanish influenza, isn’t that amazing?’ He’s like some sort of virus hipster. Vector should have been incinerated long ago.” Realizing how that sounded, he added, “I mean, first her life should have been ended in a painless, humane way, obviously. But then, incinerate her.” 

Hannibal had a subtle smile on his face now, which Will found to be an peculiar reaction. But then Hannibal said, “It’s good to see you regaining your vitality. Though I suppose the transfusions and the IV drip have had something to do with it. Now I have something to show you that will hopefully improve your mood as well.” 

From his inside jacket pocket, Hannibal pulled a tri-folded document and handed it to Will. Still lying mostly supine, Will held it up above his head, and skimmed it; it was a lot of jargon. Hannibal explained, “Incident 353-F notwithstanding, you’re totally functional and more or less sane. I plan to file this just as soon as our conversation is over here.” 

Will dropped his arm and gave Hannibal a dubious look. “Are you rubber-stamping me?” 

Hannibal seemed hurt by this. “I had imagined that this would make you happy.” 

“I just don’t think it’ll be that easy. Jack seems fairly certain that I need therapy.” 

“What you need, and what Jack thinks you need, are not the same thing. But this,” he took the paper from Will’s hand, folded it up, and put it back in his jacket pocket, without breaking eye contact with Will, “is what Jack needs. And so now our conversations will be able to proceed unobstructed by Foundation bureaucracy.” 

“Are you trying to be my therapist, or my friend?” 

“I will be whatever you need me to be, from here on out.” 

“For now, I just need you to pour me another cup of water, if you don’t mind.” 

Hannibal poured the water for Will, and said, with a casual air, “Do you truly not feel any remorse for killing Vector? She was, after all, a human being.” 

“It helps not to think of her as a person,” Will said, and sat up enough to take a drink. “She was an SCP.” 

“So are you.” 

Will didn’t respond. He drummed his fingers on his own chest, then turned on his side to face Hannibal directly. “Look, you want to be a friend? To _this_ SCP? Because there is something you can do. Sort of as a friend, sort of as a therapist.” Will took another big swallow of water, and averted his eyes, staring over Hannibal’s shoulder for a long moment, as if suddenly hesitant about what he was about to demand. 

“I’m listening,” Hannibal prompted. 

Finally, and with less ferocity, Will said, “I got headaches around SCPs for a long time, long before I knew what they meant. And ever since I learned, I have thought about all those times when my head hurt. I’ve tried to remember every single one I ever felt, where they were, what or who was around me. And I wonder if they’re still there. Did I feel a tchotchke that had been sitting harmlessly on someone’s shelf for fifty years? Or did I feel a homicidal elevator that ended up eating half the building’s residents before the Foundation could neutralize it and dose the remaining half with [amnestics](http://www.scp-wiki.net/amnestic-orientation-manual)? 

“I know that I’m going to wonder about most of those headaches for the rest of my life, not just because things move and change, but because I am kept on a tight leash. If I’m not part of an MTF, they don’t like me leaving the grounds. They let me go fishing, and that’s about it. I can’t travel. I can’t see my family. I understand it’s for my safety. My ability makes me astronomically valuable to a [rival organization](http://www.scp-wiki.net/groups-of-interest), to Marshall, Carter, and Dark or the Global Occult Coalition. I shouldn’t go places where it would be difficult for the Foundation to monitor me and extract me if necessary. But there’s one headache I always used to get, that I can’t stop worrying about. It was in my aunt and uncle’s house. 

“They were very good to me. They weren’t rich, but they took it upon themselves to host all the holiday parties, Christmas and Thanksgiving, you know, because my dad couldn’t. And even if he had to work through the holiday, they’d pay for a bus ticket for me to go up there and spend it with them. 

“But one year I got a bad headache there, and after that, I got one every time I visited. For months now, it’s been weighing on me, what was in their house, and is it still there. But I don’t want anyone here to know about it. I want to quietly go in and scout for myself, before an MTF goes busting down their door. But even if I make something up, like a funeral or something, they wouldn’t let me travel that far alone. So if you want to be a friend, then pretend you’re still my therapist, and get me out of here and to my aunt and uncle’s house. Admin might approve it, if you’re escorting me. Make something up about it having to do with my therapy.” 

Hannibal couldn’t promise anything, Will understood that. But he had a determined look on his face as he stood up and moved towards the door. “I’ll see what I can do. And in the meantime,” he patted his jacket, over the inside pocket, “I’ll hold on to this letter, until it becomes more advantageous to file it. Get some rest, and I will return in the evening.” 

 

*****

  

After one more night of observation in the infirmary (and a few more blood draws), Will was allowed to go home. His clothes were brought to him fresh and neatly folded; the nurse told him that Doctor Lecter had taken them himself to be laundered. 

Will saw an orderly on the way out, whom he informed that he was not familiar with this wing of the facility. The orderly gave him five-step directions for getting back to the main elevators. By step three, Will was sure that he was lost. Step four was to go past the next junction, but the next junction was a T. He was in the middle of considering whether he should try to find his way back, or just proceed on and ask the next staff member he encountered, when he heard a sharp, rhythmic noise coming from around the corner. It was approaching, so Will stayed put, and listened. 

A stag came into view, its hooves clicking on the linoleum. It snuffled, and regarded Will briefly, before crossing in front of him and continuing on its way, unencumbered by its broad six-point antlers, even though the corridor seemed quite narrow. 

Will’s pulse pounded as he looked for one of the buttons on the wall that one hit to signal a containment breach. There was one ten paces away, but before he got to it, it occurred to him that he had not felt the slightest pain in his head when he had seen the stag. Will trotted back to the T-junction and looked down the corridor to the right, where the stag had made its leisurely way. The corridor was quite long, but he did not see it anywhere. He kept walking, noting that there were no more turns or junctions, just two long rows of doors locked with keypads before the corridor terminated. 

Surely the doctors would not have discharged Will if they had any reason to suspect that he’d been affected by a cognitohazard. It was not entirely outside the realm of possibility that an ordinary stag had been brought into the facility, to be used in an experiment. But the glimpse he’d caught of this stag made him doubt that this was the case; its hide was quite black, and shimmered, like sleek feathers rather than fur. 

Will vowed to say something, probably not to Jack, but at least to Hannibal, if he “saw” anything else in the future. For now, he thought best to keep quiet about it. Everyone had off days, didn’t they? And he didn’t want to cause a fuss when there was no need to.


	6. Chapter 6

Will’s aunt and uncle resided in a kit-house, purchased from Sears-Roebuck and assembled by the previous owners sometime in the 1930’s. The land all around it was uncultivated and unremarkable. 

There was another vehicle, a pickup truck, in the driveway, but Will insisted it was nothing to worry about: the Buick was the car they would have driven to church that day, and it was absent as he’d expected. 

Having stepped out of the car and into the yard, Will sensed nothing unusual. Hannibal followed him around to the back of the house, where Will identified a window with a broken lock. He pushed it open with ease, though the hinge creaked alarmingly. Will pulled himself through the window and tumbled into the room: it had been his cousin Sam’s bedroom, but was now his aunt’s sewing room. He helped Hannibal climb inside with slightly more dignity than he’d managed, himself. 

“This was the room where the headache was always the worst,” Will said, looking carefully around. “I don’t feel anything now, though. Dad gave my uncle hell one day, when I complained. Accused him of using cheap, toxic paint.” 

Hannibal suggested, “If this was your cousin’s room, and the object isn’t here anymore, there are several possibilities. Your cousin may have taken the object to his next residence. Or it may have simply been thrown out when your aunt converted the room. Or, if she is the more sentimental type…” 

“She is.” 

“…then perhaps she saved the things Sam left behind and stored them elsewhere. Shall we check the attic?” 

“I’d like to have a look around first. It might still be anywhere.” 

Will strolled through the ground floor, stepping into each room, circling it, browsing just for old time’s sake. It was mostly as he remembered it, with some new touches: a flat-screen television, sitting on the massive combination television-radio-hifi cabinet. Also on the cabinet, in front of the decades-old gilt-framed photos of children long since grown and adults recently deceased, Will saw several contemporary wood-framed photos crowded in, of his newer and slightly more distant relations, babies he’d only vaguely heard about. Their mothers and fathers were his various cousins, some of whom had not married the other parent, and whose lack of moral character was vaguely tut-tutted about in the Christmas newsletter that his great-aunt put together and distributed each year. 

Hannibal followed him as he moved about, but not too closely; Will was obviously experiencing a lot of nostalgia, and he did not wish to interrupt this. 

In the kitchen, the stove and oven were the same but the refrigerator was new, though photos were stuck to its surface with the same old crocheted orange-and-avocado butterfly magnets. Will still felt nothing out of the ordinary. 

“Let’s try upstairs,” he said. They climbed the stairs to find two bedrooms, separated by the landing. The attic, Will explained, was the cramped space between these two L-shaped rooms, accessible from either room by removing a panel in the back of a recessed area beneath the slanted ceiling which constituted a closet. 

Will couldn’t remember which of Sam’s sisters had which room. He remembered them as “the blue room” and “the yellow room.” He entered the yellow room first. It was crammed with items too little-used to remain downstairs but too precious to discard, as well as some appliances which were likely broken, but which his aunt and uncle probably intended to get around to having fixed “someday.” A radio, a VCR, the thing his aunt used to use to give herself a perm at home. 

“I just realized, I left my phone in the car,” Hannibal said. “I’ll be right back.” 

Will nodded absently while he looked around the room, disoriented by seeing familiar objects out of context here. “I don’t think there’s a burglar alarm on the front door. You can go check it out, and maybe use it instead of the window. Just be sure to lock it again when you come back in.” 

“Of course.” 

Will barely heard Hannibal descend the stairs, caught up as he was in reminiscing. He’d loved visiting his aunt and uncle and cousins, before he’d started getting the headaches. He wondered if he’d been able to detect SCPs his whole life, and the headaches began because of an object they’d acquired, or whether they’d had it all along, and his ability had manifested itself at a certain point because he’d reached a particular age or level of physical maturity. 

Will left the yellow room and crossed over to the blue room. Now he felt something. It was just a faint buzz, but as he moved toward the panel where the attic was accessed, it became stronger. This proper headache that told him the object was right under his nose. 

Will pushed aside some boxes and a rack of boldly-hued polyester dresses to reach the panel. He felt the visceral anxiety that it used to cause him as a child: on the rare occasions when he and Sam would enter one of the girl’s rooms, to stash fake plastic bugs in their beds or take their dolls hostage, it had disturbed Will to think of the panel and what lay behind it. Once, when one of the girls swore she heard a mouse, Sam dragged Will into her room while his uncle removed the panel to investigate. Sam had wanted to see the mouse, or more accurately, had hoped that it would turn out to be something bigger and more interesting than a mouse. In the end, his uncle had found nothing, but gazing into that dark and musty space, erratically illuminated by sweeps of a flashlight, had filled Will with terror, and even days later, back at home, his parents had looked at him oddly, thinking him too old to be asking if he could sleep in their bed after a nightmare. 

Will touched the panel, and felt a twinge behind one eye. There was nothing for it; he was going to have to be an adult and open it. He slowly hooked his finger into the little hole in one corner, cut there for that purpose, anticipating that he would be bitten or stung by some critter or insect. That did not happen. He took a deep breath, and pulled the panel back the way one would rip off a band-aid. A little bit of light fell on the boxes inside, and there was nothing else, save for mouse droppings and bits of insulation. 

The boxes were labeled in blocky capitals. Will shoved boxes around, trying to ignore his aching skull, until he found a box labeled “SAM’S THINGS.” He pulled one box out and into the room, to get a better look at the contents. He recognized many of the toys inside: Matchbox cars, Transformers. He also remembered the 3-D glasses, and the book that accompanied it. At a birthday party, Sam had received them as a gift from his and Will’s grandfather, who extolled their enormous entertainment value. Will remembered that Sam had briefly put on the glasses to look at a few pictures in the book, then quickly discarded them in favor of his brand-new remote control car. The next time Will saw the glasses and book, they were buried in Sam’s closet, in the box he called “baby toys” that his mother wouldn’t let him throw away for fear of hurting the feelings of the gift-givers. 

Since Sam had never suffered any ill effects from having put on the glasses and viewing the book, Will allowed his curiosity to get the better of him and decided it would be safe for him to do the same. He opened the book. Each page had a blue-and-red stereoscopic image, which leapt off the page when one viewed it with the cardboard glasses. The lenses, one blue and one red, were miraculously still intact. Despite the throbbing pain behind his eyes, he turned the pages of the book, all of which bore innocuous images of such things as a carnival, a jungle, and a city skyline. 

Having found nothing unusual, Will looked up with the intention of pondering what might be anomalous about the glasses, and saw a bipedal creature in the room. It wandered back and forth by the bed, and did not acknowledge Will’s presence. Will was silent. He slowly pulled the glasses away, just enough to determine that when he was not looking through them, no creature was visible. He put them back on, and had a look out the window, where a few more creatures of similar appearance were walking around, seemingly without purpose, not interacting with anything in their environment. Will wanted to have a look around the rest of the house with them. When he turned, one was standing right at his shoulder, its face nearly touching his own. 

He gasped and whipped the glasses off, and saw Hannibal. “Jesus, it’s just you,” he breathed. 

“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Hannibal said. “Did you find something?” 

“It’s these glasses,” Will said. He dropped the book and glasses and stood up. “Let me just put this stuff back and we can get the hell out of here.” 

He closed up the box and moved to put it away without replacing the glasses. Hannibal said, “Aren’t you going to put those back?” 

“What? No, we’ve got to take them back to U-62.” 

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to take an untested, uncatalogued SCP onto a commercial flight, do you?” 

“But we can’t call an MTF to come in here and get them. The whole point of this was to find the object and extract it quietly. These things are perfectly safe; they’ve been sitting up here in a box in the attic for thirty-odd years.” 

“But won’t it be stressful for you to be so close to an SCP for so long? It will mean hours of headaches.” 

A bewildered expression fell over Will’s face, and he said, “Now that you mention it, my head doesn’t hurt at all. It hasn’t since just after I…” Will looked down at the glasses. He wanted to put them on again, to see if they were still active…but then again, he didn’t. What he’d seen hadn’t even been the most horrific thing he’d encountered that _week_ , but he still didn’t want to think about it. 

“It may be shock,” Hannibal offered, “or a side effect of using them. Would you like to keep them on while we travel, hoping that the effect continues?” 

“No. Hell, no. Okay, you’re right. But let me be the one to call the retrieval team. If an MTF comes in here, they’re coming in here according to _my_ instructions. I don’t want jack-booted thugs kicking in the door and drugging my family for no reason.” 

“That sounds fair.” Hannibal picked up the book and glasses and put them back in the box, then helped Will replace the box and fit the panel back into the wall. They went downstairs and exited through the window, carefully leaving the things underneath it undisturbed. Once they were in the car, Hannibal pulled out of the driveway with caution, ensuring that they left no suspicious tire tracks in the gravel.


	7. Chapter 7

“…But I think what I love most about Mozart’s operas is that he so brilliantly adapted the forms of classical music to reflect the drama. So much of _Le Nozze de Figaro_ moves and resolves like a sonata.” 

[SCP-126](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-126) was inclined to flit about the room, rather than stay in one place, during their sessions, but Hannibal could determine where she was at all times, so long as she was talking and he could follow the sound of her voice. 

“I agree,” he said in the direction of the chair that he was fairly sure she was leaning on at the moment. “It is the perfect synthesis of music and drama, and conveys the tale in a way which would have been monotonous had it been reduced to recitatives.” 

He glanced at his watch, and said, “I’m afraid our time is up. But it was a delight to talk to you, as always.” 

SCP-126 pouted, “Oh, but we didn’t even have a chance to talk about _Don Giovanni_.” 

“Something to look forward to for next week,” Hannibal replied, in the hopes of cheering her. 

“I must confess, I despair of ever finding another man who is so charming a conversationalist as you,” she lamented, as Hannibal took up his pen and notebook and prepared to leave. “But then again, when I talk to you, I worry that I don’t deserve it anyway, as I am so lacking in charm by comparison.” 

Hannibal leaned back into the room just before he closed the door to the containment chamber, and smiled at where he guessed she was. “Now that is certainly not true,” he said with a smile. “In fact, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve never seen.” 

 

*****

  

Will was on his way to Jack’s office when he encountered Hannibal in the corridor. Hannibal seemed pleased to see him. “Hello Will. I’m looking forward to our appointment tomorrow. There is so much for us to talk about.” 

Willing as he was to stop and exchange pleasantries with Hannibal, Will shifted from foot to foot. “About that. I don’t really like talking in that consultation room. Not that there’s anything wrong with it…I just don’t like being in the facility, you know.” 

Will did not expect that his being slightly critical and contradictory would earn a look of delight from Hannibal, but one was immediately apparent. “I understand perfectly,” Hannibal said. “And since you are not officially my patient, there is no need to meet in the consultation room. As an alternative, I would like to invite you to my home. I will cook lunch for us, and as I have no other appointments tomorrow afternoon, we can enjoy a more leisurely conversation.” 

“That would be good, but you don’t have to cook.” Will thought that part of the suggestion seemed odd. “I can grab something before I come over.” 

“Nonsense. Cooking is a passion of mine. I realize it may seem odd for me to do such a thing for a patient…but as I said, you are not a patient. You’re my friend.” 

It still sounded a bit like a date to Will, but he was disinclined to turn down an offer of a home-cooked meal. “Alright,” he said, “you’ve twisted my arm. Same time, though? Eleven?” 

“How about eleven-thirty, as I will need time to prepare, after my last morning appointment.” 

Will nodded and took another step in the direction of Jack’s office, before Hannibal addressed him again. “Oh, and Will: I hope you’re not a vegetarian…?” 

“Nope,” Will replied, and continued on his way in earnest. 

 

*****

  

Will was initially startled, when he saw the furnishings of Hannibal’s home for the first time. But then he had to laugh at himself for being so silly; of course a man like Hannibal, when provided with a house in the atomic-ranch style, would have found a way to make it refined and tasteful. In between the fireplace of flat gray stones and the wide picture windows was a selection of furniture with all the sleekness of mid-century modern, but in rich fabrics, soft leather, with dark hues to give it elegance. On the walls and shelves were arrayed a variety of striking curios, originating from all points of the globe. 

As soon as Hannibal had closed the door behind Will, he excused himself to the kitchen, which was visible from the front door owing to the open floor plan. He invited Will to have a look around, examine the trinkets and paintings on the walls if he was so inclined, and then to have a seat at the dining table; lunch would be ready in ten minutes or so. 

Some of the objects Will examined looked like they could reasonably have come straight from U-62’s reliquary wing: oddly proportioned statues, illustrations which turned out to be quite morbid if one examined them closely, items possibly intended for obscure religious rituals. “Do you travel?” Will asked. “Is that how you’ve built your collection?” 

“Working for the Foundation has somewhat limited my ability to travel, I’m afraid,” Hannibal replied, “but before they employed me I did see quite a lot of the world. Even now, though, the Foundation occasionally grants me a leave of absence, usually because I promise to put in a little time at one of the local facilities.” 

Will wandered over to the table, which had been set with cutlery, glassware, and napkins, but not plates. Will asked if he could assist, but Hannibal insisted he have a seat and make himself comfortable. Hannibal brought the meal out already plated. 

“You struck me as a man who would enjoy a good steak, but rarely finds the opportunity.” 

“You’re very insightful,” Will said. 

As he set Will’s plate before him, Hannibal said: “Filet mignon, rochebaron scalloped potatoes, portabellini mushrooms, and proscuitto-wrapped asparagus, with sauce bordelaise.” He politely ignored Will’s jaw hanging open. 

Will said, “If this is just lunch, what do you do for dinner?” 

“Come by sometime and find out,” Hannibal offered. He poured Will a glass of red wine to accompany the meal, then one for himself, and took his own seat. Will knew basically nothing about wine, or how to drink it, so he decided he would just imitate whatever Hannibal did: holding the glass by the stem, tilting it just slightly and holding his nose over the glass ( _Do you take a deep whiff_ , Will wondered, o _r do you just let it sort of waft up into your sinus cavity?_ ) before taking a small first sip. 

The steak, on the other hand, Will knew how to eat, although it was not without its own uncertainty. After two bites, he started to say, “Is this…?” but then stopped himself. What a stupid question to ask, _Is this beef?_ Instead, he said, “This beef has an unusual taste. Is it in the preparation?” 

Hannibal favored him with a smirk. “I take it you buy prepared meals when you visit the Post-Exchange?” 

Will admitted this with a nod. “Yeah. Except for the fish I catch, most of what I buy comes from a can or a box.” 

“The Foundation raises and butchers their own cattle, for distribution to the Post-Exchange. Grass-fed, no hormones, no antibiotics. What you’re tasting is the actual taste of beef.” 

“No kidding. Well, it’s amazing. And I’m sure it is only enhanced by your talents.” 

“How kind of you to say. Really, I’m just glad that the unfortunate incident with Vector has not put you off rare meat.” 

“Not at all. I’ve been trying to think about Vector as little as possible, to be honest.” 

Hannibal refused to take the hint. “I’m curious to know: Did it feel good to kill Vector?” 

“Not the killing itself.” 

“But it _did_ feel good?” 

Seeing no way out, and not wanting to affront his otherwise gracious host, Will sighed and said, “When I’m doing my job, I try to think about the people whose lives I save. The people I protect. The people who can go about free and happy and ignorant. The minds that will go undisturbed by a cognitohazard. The flesh that will remain untouched by extradimensional parasites or eight-inch claws, because I helped put another dangerous thing away. _That_ feels good.” 

“You say ‘thing.’ And before, in the infirmary, you said you try not to think of SCPs like Vector as human.” 

“Vector was not willing to obey society’s rules.” Will realized he was talking with food in his mouth, and paused to swallow before he continued. “There are consequences when you don’t obey the rules. Otherwise this world would be utter chaos. Or rather, the fact that this world _is_ utter chaos would be more apparent.” 

“I see. So does your job truly satisfy you because it saves lives and protects people? Or do you continue to do it because you can’t stand the chaos?” 

“That doesn’t seem like something I would have to justify to anyone. Not being able to stand chaos is not a pathology.” 

“But our excursion to your aunt and uncle’s house made me wonder if perhaps the control you were able to exert over Vector’s fate sparked a desire in you to make more decisions about controlling other SCPs, perhaps even in that same way, if necessary.” 

Will smiled as he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “I get it now. You’re afraid I’ll go mad with power. No. There’s a difference between a fantasy and what is practical in reality.” 

“You do fantasize, then, about destroying SCPs objects you consider unworthy of life?” 

“Not for its own sake. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of killing living beings. But entities should be done away with when they have made it clear that their intention is to wreak catastrophic havoc on this universe or the people in it.” 

“So what you wish for is the power to merely…impose more _order_ on the universe.” 

Will let a piece of steak remain speared on his fork as he laughed ruefully, and replied, “I may not have your intellect, Doctor Lecter, but I’m smart enough to know that anyone who intends to impose order on anything by killing undesirables will inevitably pull things deeper into chaos. Vector is one less thing to worry about, that’s all. Existence is chaos, and I don’t like it, but I know better than to think I can eradicate it.” 

Hannibal raised his eyebrows. He seemed impressed with Will’s thought. “You understand that chaos and order are inextricably linked. Though some might say they are one and the same.” 

Will did not know how to reply to this, and so returned his concentration to the meal. It was only the one course, but it was substantial: when Will began to feel full, he looked down to see that a third of the steak still remained. As a child, when he’d found himself in this situation, his father or grandmother would tell him that it was alright to leave the side dishes but to at least finish eating the meat portion of the meal, that is, “the expensive part.” So Will neglected the remaining vegetables and potatoes in favor of finishing the steak and proscuitto. 

That having been done, he professed that he was quite finished, and Hannibal stood to take their plates back to the kitchen. To his dismay, Hannibal then proceeded to bring out two desserts from the refrigerator and set them on the counter. Will couldn’t quite tell what they were from his vantage point – two slices of something rich, accompanied by bits of fruit – but they already looked decadent even before Hannibal spooned a thick, dark sauce over them. 

But when Hannibal set the dessert before him, it looked so incredible, he became convinced he had just a little room left. 

“I do worry, Will, that your desire to impose order might be making your job more difficult than it needs to be. To fight against such an overwhelming force might cause your own mind will fall into chaos.” 

Hannibal had given him Will a clean fork, and as he took it up, he said, “To be honest, I’m not enjoying this conversation. I thought that we were done with the psychoanalysis when you filed your report, and that I could have a nice, relaxing time here and not have to think about work.” 

“Fair enough,” Hannibal said. Instead, he mentioned that he had read in Will’s file that Will owned a lot of dogs, and was curious to know about them. Will cheered up immediately, speaking animatedly about the dogs between bites of dessert, about their assorted personalities and habits. Hannibal listened with a polite, but not overwhelming, interest. At last, with nothing more to say about the dogs and with his plate entirely unburdened of dessert, Will leaned back and put his hand on his belly. 

“Everything was to your liking?” Hannibal asked. 

“It was too good, Doctor Lecter. I have definitely overeaten. It’s a good thing I don’t live so far away, because I may have to roll home.” 

“You needn’t leave so soon; you’re welcome to relax here for a while and do a little digesting.” 

“Eat your food and then fall asleep on your couch? Seems kind of…rude.” 

“Not at all. I’m flattered by your inclination to overindulge in my cooking.” 

Will stood up – slowly – and Hannibal waited for him to approach so that he might lead him. Contrary to Will’s expectation, Hannibal guided him not to the sofa, as comfortable as it looked, but down the hallway and into the master bedroom. 

It might have been mistaken for a guest room: everything was so immaculate and crisp, it was as though no one ever used it. But little clues, like the book on the bedside table, and a selection of cufflinks on the dresser, indicated that this bedroom was Hannibal’s. Will slipped off his shoes and laid down on top of the covers. 

“This is slightly weird,” he remarked, just to acknowledge it, but being horizontal felt so good at the moment, he could not affect any further objection to the situation. Hannibal said nothing about it, only assured Will that he wouldn’t let him nap for too long, and then left the room. From the kitchen, Will heard the muted clatter of dishes being gathered up and washed, before he fell asleep. 

 

*****

 

Will returned to consciousness slowly, with little idea of how much time had passed. It couldn’t have been too long, as the light in the room seemed the same as it had been when he’d dozed off. One thing was different, though, he gradually realized: he was being spooned. A substantial presence warmed his back and thighs, its soft and regular breathing brushing the back of his neck. An arm was wrapped around his waist, a large hand resting on his belly, which still felt quite full. Will could smell Hannibal’s subtle cologne. 

“You’ve only been asleep twenty minutes,” Hannibal said, in answer to Will’s unasked question. 

Will hummed softly. Being full of food and lying in bed in the middle of the day felt so delicious, he wondered how much longer he could do it before he would start to feel guilty about wasting time. Then he said, “Doctor Lecter?” 

“Hm?” 

“I can feel your erection.” 

Hannibal remained where he was, lying quite still. “Does it bother you?” 

Will was so drowsy and comfortable, his honest reply was, “Not really.” 

After a long pause, Hannibal ventured to ask, “Does it _interest_ you?” 

Will was still determined to continue napping. “Not at the moment,” he murmured, and fell back into slumber, perhaps snuggling a little closer beneath Hannibal’s arm as he did so. 

 

*****

  

When Will woke again, he was alone in the bed. He felt refreshed, which he rarely did after a nap, and less uncomfortably full. He rolled to sit on the edge of the bed, and tried to tidy his hair a little in the mirror over the dresser. When he felt fully awake, he proceeded down the hallway to find Hannibal. 

The light coming into the living room through the western windows fell just short of Hannibal’s desk, where he was filling a page in a notebook with his immaculate handwriting. “Hello, Will,” he said without looking up. 

“Hello. Uh, thank you so much for your hospitality,” Will said. “You were very generous, and I’m sorry I was such an odd guest.” 

Only when Hannibal had finished the sentence he was writing did he place the pen on the desk and rise to greet Will properly. “It was my pleasure.” 

“I’ve really got to get home, though. I promised the dogs I’d take them down to the river and let them run around a little bit. Sorry, I realize that sounds stupid.” 

“Not at all. I would not want to keep you from your dogs; it is obvious that they contribute greatly to your well-being.” Hannibal followed Will to the door and saw him out. “I’m sure we will see each other again soon. Until then, be safe.”


	8. Chapter 8

The din of the conversation of thirty or so Mobile Task Force members died immediately as Jack Crawford approached the podium. They were rapt as he began to speak; this was the culmination of weeks’ worth of rumors and anxiety. 

“As you are all aware, there have been several containment breaches recently, here at U-62. First Vector, then a little incident with [SCP-1026](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1026) that prompted a change in containment procedures, and then _someone_ had to satisfy their curiosity about what happens when [SCP-447](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-447) comes into contact with a dead body. And while the Mobile Task Forces, often aided by Special Agent Graham,” Jack nodded in his direction, “have been successful in recovering most of the objects at large, there has been a significant uptick in reports of anomalous activity coming from our deep-cover operatives on the Eastern Seaboard. The nature of the objects and the socio-economic status of the victims in many of these reports lead us to believe that Marshall, Carter, and Dark is facilitating this trend. We do not yet know what proportion of their merchandise is being distributed through auctions, versus through catalogs or simple word-of-mouth. Once we have more data, we can concentrate our efforts to more effectively keep prestigious SCPs out of the hands of the elite. 

“But in the meantime, the Task Force Beta-1 is ordering preventative measures to the extent possible. Therefore, we have been monitoring known and suspected past and present customers of Marshall, Carter, and Dark, and our plan is to infiltrate not only their residences, but also the social events that they host – an SCP on the loose at a debutante ball is going to be hard to hush up. 

“Foundation agents working undercover have given us leads on several society events, as well as two possible upcoming Marshall, Carter, and Dark auctions. We have to recover as many objects at these events as possible, before the Global Occult Coalition can get to them. We are all too familiar with the Coalition buying up entire auctions and destroying the items wholesale. 

“If you are sitting in this rom, you are a member of a relevant MTF, and will be part of this effort, which we are calling Project Grapple. For the duration of this operation, you will all be given false identities that place you in positions of wealth and power. You will look, dress, act, and think according to the rules of society’s elite. By the end of your training, you will all be able to tie a Windsor knot and fake your way through a conversation about hedge funds, modern art, or where to find the best child prostitutes in Thailand, whichever subject happens to come up. 

“Special Agent Graham will be accompanying you on select retrieval missions. He will identify SCP targets in his vicinity, and retrieval will proceed in the manner judged most appropriate by the Task Force leader. Discretion is the highest priority. 

“You have all been provided with a list of SCP objects that have been lost in recent containment breaches. You are on the lookout for all of these items, not just the ones that have a known history with customers of Marshall, Carter, and Dark. If we have suspicions about the whereabouts of specific objects which have escaped containment, we will be assigning to those whereabouts Task Forces that have prior experience with those objects…so expect to be reunited with some old friends. 

“That’s all I have. You’re dismissed. Expect your retrieval assignments at fourteen hundred hours.” 

As the group rose and exited in a frenzy of gossip and speculation, Bregna, the leader of Mobile Task Force Phi-3, hung back to speak to Will. 

“Something extremely fucked up is going on,” she muttered, “if you’ll pardon my use of technical jargon.” 

“What makes you say that? The Foundation has done sweeps of Marshall, Carter, and Dark auctions in the past.” 

“Not like this. Not out in broad daylight. And after all the containment breaches that have been going on?” 

“How many have there been?” Will asked. 

By now, the rest of the crowd had cleared out of the room. Bregna leaned out the door, confirmed that no one else was lingering nearby, and confided to Will: “It’s not so bad that it’s reached people on the lower rungs. But there’s been an eight percent increase in objects breaching containment in the last three months, and [O5](http://www.scp-wiki.net/security-clearance-levels#toc24) is shitting themselves about it.” 

“Eight percent doesn’t seem like much. It might just be a fluke.” 

“Imagine someone told you that your breakfast cereal would now feature ‘only’ eight percent more rat feces. It’d be on your mind, wouldn’t it?” 

“Fair point. But if they’ve traced it to Marshall, Carter, and Dark, won’t they find the leak and plug it soon enough?” 

“It’s not just Marshall, Carter, and Dark. This is just one way we’re trying to clean up our mistakes. But all sorts of objects have been going missing. Worthless stuff, stuff they wouldn’t touch. All I hear all day from my team are rumors about what rival group is responsible. Some guys think it’s the Global Occult Coalition, but some think it’s the Church of the Broken God.” 

“But isn’t smuggling anomalous objects to Marshall, Carter, and Dark somewhat antithetical to the goals of those groups?” 

“Yeah, but who the hell knows? Look, I once knew a guy assigned to the [Clone Coffin](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-222). He duplicated himself in it, which was the most blatant insubordination imaginable, and when they asked him why he did it, he said his girlfriend wanted to try a three-way with another man, and he wanted to make her happy, but he was the jealous type, so that was the only way he could see fit to go through with it. The point is, people do crazy things for dumb reasons.” She shrugged, “But it keeps my team in business, so why should I complain?” 

Will nodded wistfully. Bregna had reminded him that a researcher had once suggested putting _him_ in the Clone Coffin. 

 

*****

 

The stately resort lodge was framed by rolling green hills and a birch grove that was at once lush and elegant. The meadow that now lay between the Mobile Task Force and the lodge was unspoiled, surrounded by chic rustic fencing, though the gravel parking lot to the east, packed with stylish cars, gave away that this was, in fact, the twenty-first century. 

As they approached the lodge, Goodchild muttered, “All this fresh air and nature is gonna kill me. Can’t rich people just elope in a grubby courthouse downtown and invite their friends to get drunk in the park with them afterward? You know, like normal people do?” 

A shadow moving amongst the birch trees caught Will’s eye, and there he saw the stag again. It was the same one, for sure, though its glossy black coat was just a blur in his vision. And then it was gone. 

“Did you guys just see a black stag?” Will said, pointing to the grove. 

“I think I saw a porno once called _Black Stag_ ,” Goodchild said, and the others giggled. 

“Hey, who the hell is that?” Lorna said, gesturing. Will turned to look, and his stomach dropped with dread. A woman was headed his way, dressed slightly too young for her age and with a head of bright red curls that bounced as she trotted. 

“We meet again,” she said to Will, clearly quite pleased with herself. She did not address him by name because, so far as he could guess, she did not know it. Yet. 

“How did you find me?” Will said, trying so hard to sound undaunted that he ended up sounding just as anxious as he was. 

“Trouble just seems to follow you. Or actually, you follow the trouble. Strange things happen, and then suddenly they stop, and just before they stop, I often see you.” 

“Did it ever occur to you that it might not be a good idea to annoy a guy who can make troublesome things go away so easily? Do us both a favor and stop seeing me, and the strange things, too, while you’re at it.” 

“Who is this?” Bregna demanded. Her newly-manicured hand dipped into her handbag, where she had a pager that could call for backup, without the need for verbal communication that would give it away. She pushed the button to summon two additional team members equipped with sedatives and amnestics. 

“Freddie Lounds is a conspiracy nut,” Will explained. “She runs a blog.” 

“You know,” said Freddie, “I’ve never like the term ‘conspiracy nut.’ I prefer to think of the majority of the population as ‘coincidence nuts.’ They think it’s just a _coincidence_ that my friends get visits from U.S. Strategic Command when they publicize the location of [low-earth objects](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-245) that aren’t in the official catalogs of space junk. They think it’s a _coincidence_ that the oil industry continues to flourish even after the invention of a [flying machine](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-240) that runs on the pilot’s exhalations.” 

Bregna looked over Freddie’s shoulder, saw her backup approaching. “Miss Lounds, it was very nice to meet you, but I’ve got a little work to do, and in fact, so do these two gentlemen.” She gestured to the backup, who effortlessly restrained Freddie and sank a hypodermic needle into her neck. Her eyes fluttered shut, and they walked her quickly into the parking lot, amongst the tightly-packed Escalades and Hummers, where they were sufficiently concealed. Aside from that slightly suspicious moment, the entire exchange had looked like a perfectly normal conversation in the driveway between well-dressed individuals, and the team proceeded casually into the lodge. 

“Were those Class A or Class B?” Lorna asked. 

“Looked like A to me,” said Goodchild. 

“Why don’t we give her Class E and have done with it?” 

Bregna looked like she might order it then and there, but Will interjected: “My understanding is that the paranoia she felt after having been administered a Class E and having false memories implanted was what motivated her to go into the conspiracy business in the first place.” 

“Christ almighty,” Goodchild said, “all we want is to drug people in peace, but how can we, when there’s nutjobs swarming around us accusing us of drugging people?” 

The team had been briefed on the details of the wedding whose reception they were attending: names, faces, relationships, and a cover story for each team member, if anyone inquired about their presence there. The newlyweds themselves were not suspected of having procured from Marshall, Carter, and Dark, but there was strong circumstantial evidence to implicate the bride’s father. And the interior of the lodge that the team was now entering looked like just the sort of place that would strike the fancy of an eccentric millionaire with a taste for the unusual. It was a stunning, high-ceilinged post-and-beam room, easily accommodating the two hundred-or-so guests, with room leftover for a band and dance floor. An open-hearth fireplace roared and crackled at the opposite end of the room, and in the center was an enormous circular buffet, topped with a majestic five-tiered chocolate fountain. Hanging from the center beam of the peaked ceiling was a row of enormous chandeliers made from numerous sets of antlers; creepy, but appropriate considering the rest of the sleekly rustic décor. 

“It’s a hunting lodge for rich weirdos,” Goodchild said, smirking. Will gave him a blank look. 

“I get it,” said Lorna. 

“I get it,” said Bregna. 

The four of them activated their earpieces, and then Bregna, Lorna, and Goodchild moved into position while Will wandered off to make his rounds. He was already feeling the presence of at least one object, and considering that the pain in his temple did not dissipate entirely, no matter where he walked, he suspected there were several. 

In between polite nods to friendly attendees and watching to make sure he didn’t bump into anyone and draw attention to himself, Will scanned the room for any visual clues; he’d had a look through some photographs of recently-lost SCP objects that were likely to be of interest to Marshall, Carter, and Dark. This knowledge, along with the pain in his head, drew him to a large red stone in a gold setting, hung around the neck of a woman Will recognized from a photo as the mother of the bride. 

“Pretty sure Mrs. Gildemere is wearing a [Blood Opal](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-578),” Will muttered, too low to be heard by any guests but loud and clear to the rest of the team. “I’m still working, though. Stand by. Oh, and I’ve seen two people so far who are armed. Mister Gildemere has a shoulder rig; when he leaned forward I noticed the outline of the strap. And there’s a man at my ten o’clock with a hip holster. You can see his jacket’s been cut to accommodate it.” 

As Will made his way around the buffet table, he noticed that the pain in his head neither increased or decreased. But when he took a step toward the table, he felt a fresh sting behind his right eye. “There’s something on the table, here,” he said. “I don’t recognize anything from the files I reviewed. You guys?” 

Before anyone could respond, the crown of the fountain on the buffet table erupted with hundreds of enormous reddish-brown ants, so numerous that they obscured the chocolate as they cascaded down each tier. The room was immediately filled with screams, as the fountain was tall enough to be visible to just about everyone present. In the first few seconds, bystanders simply leaped away from the table, but then watched with fascination as the ants poured out. They might have made their way to safety, had they started running immediately, but their dawdling resulted in their being swarmed and devoured by the army of insects. 

Like any of their mundane counterparts, these army ants engulfed anything that moved. They were not at all intimidated by something the size of a human; in a matter of seconds, they had formed themselves into several super-organisms, covering and then consuming those closest to the fountain. 

Will fled the moment he saw the eruption, beating his fellow guests to the door by his willingness to climb and leap over tables and chairs. Behind him, the ant swarm was so large, it was audible, a sort of slithering, skittering sound. Having had their fill of the guests, they did not retreat, but only changed their strategy, reducing their prey to tiny chunks of cut-up meat, which rather than eat, they carried back to the fountain, disappearing into the central cylinder. Meanwhile, more ants continued to emerge; the buffet table was nothing more than a swirling, swarming mass of insects, and they were spreading across the floor, writhing columns of them scaling the legs of the dining tables to overtake those who thought they might be safe if they got to higher ground. 

Over the sound of screams – some of them suddenly degenerating into gruesome gurgles – Will could hear the rest of the team in his earpiece, shrieking for backup and demanding the immediate delivery of a Level 4 carbide-steel containment transport unit. Once he was out of the building, Will turned the corner and looked in the window. He watched the continuing cascade of ants down the fountain, and then his gaze traveled straight up, to where the largest of the chandeliers was bolted to the center beam and suspended by a rope thick as a man’s wrist. The few remaining bystanders were out of the building, but Will knew that trying to contain that monstrosity while it was still active was sure to obliterate the Task Force. 

Next to him, Mr. Gildemere was stomping at the ground. He had carried a few ants on his shoes, and found, to his relief, that they were as susceptible as any other insects to the heel of a shoe. Thus distracted, he did not have a chance to fend Will off before Will plunged a hand beneath his jacket to snatch his automatic pistol. He aimed it at the ceiling, prompting Gildemere to shriek, “What are you doing?” 

“I’m sorry about the window,” Will said, shrugging off his jacket and wrapping his arm in it. 

“What window?” 

“This one.” Will smashed through the glass with his wrapped elbow, then leaned in and fired shot after shot at the rope, near where it was bolted to the ceiling, His aim was true; three shots met the rope, splitting and unraveling it, until the last few intact strands gave way on their own, and a quarter-ton worth of antlers came crashing down, collapsing the entire buffet table and crushing the chocolate fountain, until it resembled not so much a tower as it did a hubcap. 

The ants which had already emerged from the fountain did not relent, but no new specimens came forth. Will was then recruited to assist with the administration of amnestics to the remaining wedding guests (which included the groom but not, sadly, the bride). His help freed up another Task Force member for spraying pyrethrin, and thereafter shoveling up the mounds of poisoned insects. At last, Bregna and her team lifted away the shattered chandelier and scraped the remains of the fountain into a transport container. 

Just before they got into the van, Goodchild took Will aside and said, “I will deny to the ends of the Earth that I ever said this, because Jack Crawford is going to wear your skin when he finds out what you did, and you pretty much deserve it, but…thank you. You probably saved the lives of every Task Force member here, and at this moment I care more about them than I do about proper containment procedures.” 

Will grinned sardonically. “But you didn’t say that.” 

“Nope!” He slapped Will on the back and got into the van. “Hey guys, what did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? _Dead-ant…dead-ant…dead-ant dead-ant dead-ant_ …Wait, I got another one: okay, why did the ant fall off the toilet seat...”


	9. Chapter 9

Will was not looking at Hannibal, only a grayscale image of him on a monitor. Hannibal was, Will knew, on the other side of three centimeters of tungsten. Typically, humanoid subjects who were in containment and communicating via closed-circuit television would look at the screen in their unit, and so their eyes seemed averted. But Hannibal ignored the screen, and looked directly at the camera, seemingly right at Will, and Will found this perturbing, but tried to act unconcerned about it. 

“You specifically requested to speak with me,” Will said. 

“Yes,” Hannibal replied. “There is something important we must discuss. My brothers will awaken soon.” 

Will was overcome by a shiver. He hoped Hannibal couldn’t see it. “Brothers. There are more of you?” 

“A great many more. And considering your inability to keep even one of us under control, I can only imagine the chaos several million will cause.” Imagining the chaos seemed to please Hannibal, for he smiled wistfully. 

From behind him, Will heard the panicked murmurs of the researchers present. He tried to ignore it. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked. 

“Because this meager world won't support us for long. With your pitiful technology, it might take thousands of years to find a way off this planet, once it's consumed. I don't think I could stand another twenty millennia floating in space, particularly with nothing to eat.” 

“So then what do you want?” 

Hannibal glanced away from the camera. “I want you to kill them all. I want you to make sure this paradise doesn't dissolve before my eyes.” When he looked back, it was at the monitor, briefly. Will realized that he was being scrutinized, more so in that moment than when Hannibal had been looking into the camera. “I'll tell you how to kill them, but in exchange I want two things.” 

Will acted like he wasn’t impressed with Hannibal’s offer, regardless of what his price might be. “What’s to stop us from using the information you give us to kill you?” 

Hannibal seemed amused at this idea. “Do you really think I'd tell you how to kill _me_? My brothers might share my genes, but they do not share my physiology. Now, shall I tell you my terms? One of them specifically involves you.” 

“One more question, first: Why are you here? On Earth, I mean.” 

“Why are _you_ here, Special Agent Graham?” 

Will gave some thought to the question, before finally replying, “To stop you.” 

Hannibal smiled, like he respected that answer. 

 

*****

  

Will woke with a start to a dark, quiet room. From the floor in front of the fireplace, his dogs looked at him with their ears perked up, but remained quiet and still. He was the only thing in the room that might disturb them; though he was shaking, and had sweated through his t-shirt and the sheets, he had not the slightest inkling of a headache. 

He looked at the clock. Christ, he’d only gone to bed forty minutes ago, and he was a wreck. Winston, his latest acquisition, rose from the pile of dogs, came over to Will, and put his head on Will’s knee. Will scratched him behind the ears and said, “Hi buddy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He couldn’t help but smile at Winston’s little happy whine. 

Just outside the front door, Will heard an odd shuffling. The dogs perked up, their attention diverted to the door. Will hissed softly at them to keep them quiet, and stood up to approach the door. As he did, he heard no more sounds, but he could still feel strongly that there was a presence on the other side of the door. He peered through the peephole, and saw the same stag that he’d seen in the facility, all black, with a coat of lustrous feathers. It seemed to be looking right at him, even through the door, then turned and made its slow way down his front walk and toward the street. 

Will darted back to the bed, hurried into the pair of jeans he’d discarded on the floor, and went outside to follow the stag, barefoot and with his hair still damp with sweat. Whether the stag was actually there or not, he was aware that it was not a good look, walking down the street in the middle of the night the way he was, but he didn’t care. And anyway, he doubted he would be seen in the first place: no one in the neighborhood ever left their curtains open at night. 

The stag’s pace was leisurely, and occasionally it looked back at him, but for some reason, Will could not compel himself to trot up and overtake it. He matched the stag’s speed and maintained the distance for a few blocks, until he was nearly at Doctor Lecter’s house. Will turned to see how far he’d walked, and when he looked back, the stag was gone. He swore sharply, looking all around, in case it had only concealed itself somewhere. 

This was very bad. If the stag wasn’t anomalous, and it could disappear so suddenly, then there was really no other possibility than that Will was losing his mind. He looked ahead, to Doctor Lecter’s house, where he could still see lamplight through the closed curtains. He began walking again, noticing more keenly now the stray bits of asphalt poking into the soles of his feet with each step. 

Despite the late hour, Hannibal answered the door still looking dapper in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, though he wore no shoes, and a few strands of hair had strayed down over his forehead. He invited Will inside without hesitation. Will scraped his feet against the doormat to brush away the dirt and gravel before stepping through the door. 

Hannibal did not seem to find Will’s appearance at all alarming. He simply said, “What brings you here this evening?” 

“I had a nightmare,” Will said. He knew that was a stupid thing for a grown man to say, and he was not entirely sure that he was mitigating the idiocy by adding, “And I just thought I might like to have some company.” This felt strange to say; usually his dogs provided him all the company he needed. 

“By all means. I am here to help you, any time of the day or night. Can I get you something to eat?” 

“No, I’m not hungry.” Will gazed at the floor. 

Hannibal looked him up and down. “Would it make you feel better if you had a shower?” 

“Probably. But, I don’t want to. I don’t want to have to…be alone.” 

Hannibal did not make any attempt to hide a sly smile, which prompted Will to stutter, “I didn’t mean it in that way. I just—” 

“I understand perfectly. You are feeling foolish because you know that your nightmare has given you irrational fear. But a little irrational fear on occasion is quite normal, and nothing to feel foolish about. If you like, I will go with you, but I’ll stay strictly on the other side of the shower curtain, and just give you some company.” 

Will’s head shook a little bit, but he managed to wrangle it into a proper nod. “That would work.” 

There was some awkwardness, naturally: Hannibal asked to take Will’s clothes from him so he could launder them. Will could handle being in the bathroom alone long enough to strip, but as he passed his clothes to Hannibal through the crack in the door, he still felt like a jackass, being embarrassed about what was happening. Not only did Hannibal work for the Foundation, not only was he a psychiatrist, but in civilian life he’d also been a surgeon. He had to have seen and heard it all, and probably thought Will was acting like a child, being frightened of a nightmare and then coy about being naked. 

When Will was safely behind the shower curtain and had the water on, Hannibal lowered the lid of the toilet and seated himself. “Would you like to tell me about the nightmare?” he asked. 

Will didn’t answer right away, but when he did it was in a clear, even tone. “It was about [an SCP](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-378) I encountered my first month working for the Foundation. I helped track it down, and when we had someone that it had affected in containment, it asked for me, specifically. I had a conversation with it, which, you know, I don’t ever really have to do. That was all the dream was about. Something that stuck with me.” 

“Did something happen recently that reminded you of this SCP, in waking hours?” 

“I don’t think so. I don’t put a lot of meaning into dreams, Doctor Lecter. I had nightmares before I ever came here. Our brains just have weird ways of dealing with things. Guess I don’t have to tell you that.” 

This was why he didn’t mention that the affected person had been Hannibal, in the dream. The subconscious did strange things, caused nonsensical collisions. That it had been Hannibal was easily attributed to their spending so much time together lately. 

Will turned the water off, and reached out from behind the curtain for a towel. Hannibal handed him one. 

“There are techniques for lucid dreaming that one can learn. You can determine that you are dreaming, and then direct the dream how you choose.” 

“I’ve heard about that. You’re supposed to look at a clock and do a reality check. And if you figure out that the clock doesn’t work, you’re dreaming. I don’t know how useful that would be to me here. You remember when that little silver sphere got loose and it was three forty-eight PM in the facility for two days, until we found it?” Will wrapped the towel around his waist and pushed aside the shower curtain. “Have you got something for me to wear until my clothes come out of the dryer?” 

Hannibal looked Will over, but impassively. “I have some pajamas you can borrow.” He led Will to the bedroom, where he took a set of pajamas from the top drawer of the bureau. 

“Oh shit,” Will said, “my phone is still at my place.” 

“Is that a problem?” 

“If you a consider a panicked voicemail from Jack followed by an MTF dispatched to your front door a problem, then yes. Security checks my location every day at six AM and ten PM. If I’m not in my house, they think I’ve been kidnapped by a rival organization or something. But the computer also does it randomly, so if it’s been checked since ten, security will have been flagged.” 

“Where did they implant the tracking device?” 

Will lifted his chin, exposing his neck to Hannibal. “Just here, next to my carotid artery. If anyone kidnaps me, and tries to remove it, I’ll hemorrhage to death before they can make use of my ability.” 

Hannibal deadpanned, “That must be comforting for you.” He reached out and felt for the tiny chip. Just the slight press of Hannibal’s fingertips against his skin made Will whimper, a noise he quickly suppressed, with embarrassment. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, trying to laugh it off, and only humiliating himself further. “It’s just, I can’t remember the last time I was touched by someone.” He looked away from Hannibal, down at the floor, and muttered, “God, I really just can’t remember.” 

“There is nothing to be ashamed of. Physical touch is vital to one’s well-being; it’s natural for you to crave it.” 

“When we were in the bed together…I was sleepy, but I remember I felt good, because it was just kind of…normal. I was just doing this very normal thing, not talking about anything horrific, not on my way to an abandoned mental hospital where I might be absorbed by the walls. I liked that feeling. I don’t want to talk about my work anymore with you. I want to come over here and pretend that all that stuff doesn’t exist.” 

Hannibal nodded solemnly. “Do you want me to show you how I would comfort you if we were just two normal people, and you’d woken from a normal nightmare?” 

“Yes. Please, yes.” 

Hannibal took his phone from his pocket and hastily dialed. After a pause, he said, “Yes, to whom am I speaking? Oh, hello, Agent Mill, this is Doctor Lecter. My understanding is that Special Agent Will Graham – that is, SCP-3387 – has a tracking device on him that will trigger an alarm if he’s not in his home at certain time.” 

While he held the phone with one hand, Hannibal unbuttoned his waistcoat with the other, then shrugged it off, switching the phone from hand to hand. He loosened his tie as he went on, “I wanted to let you know…Yes, I understand. He is my patient, you see, and if you check, you’ll find he is at my home at the moment.” 

Still talking, Hannibal leaned down, tugging off each sock in turn, then stood up straight again and plucked the buttons of his shirt open. “I’d like to put in a request for an addendum to Will’s file,” he said, “to designate my home as a second location for him to be at between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM…Thank you, Agent Mill. Have a good evening.” 

He hung up the phone and set it on the bureau, then returned his full attention to the situation at hand. 

“Would you like to do the rest?” he asked, and after a moment’s hesitation, Will took a step forward and pushed Hannibal’s open shirt off his shoulders. He seemed to find Hannibal’s broad chest immediately fascinating, and buried both hands in its thick, salt-and-pepper hair. He remained silent, but his mouth hung open slightly. His hands followed the little trail of fuzz down Hannibal’s belly, until they reached his belt, and he took his time unfastening it, worried that Hannibal would laugh at him if he seemed too eager. Next, he unbuttoned Hannibal’s trousers, and slid down the zipper, revealing a sliver of cotton boxers beneath. He was about to push them down, but instead he decided to put his hand inside them first, and have a feel of Hannibal’s cock, hot and half-hard. He wanted to look at Hannibal’s face, but he was afraid of making eye contact. As if understanding this, Hannibal turned his head to the side, so that Will would feel safe looking up. In the low lamplight, Will watched Hannibal swallow thickly, and pant through parted lips, as his cock was gently rubbed. 

Will wanted to see it, now, so he at last pushed Hannibal’s trousers and boxers down, watching with delight as Hannibal’s cock sprang up when the fabric was tugged away. Hannibal stepped out out of the last of his clothing and reached for Will’s towel; he only needed to hook one finger beneath it to get it to fall away. He did not touch Will, not yet, just had a good long look at his body, and seemed pleased with what he saw. 

Hannibal tilted his head toward the bed, inviting Will to get in. Will might have preferred that Hannibal get in first, so he could be welcomed in by those big arms and that warm body, but once he had slipped under the blankets, and Hannibal after him, he had a guess as to why Hannibal had arranged it this way: In order for them to face each other, Will had to lie on his right side, and Hannibal on his left. This meant that Hannibal’s right hand, his dominant hand, was free to roam Will’s body, and skillfully stroke his cock. 

“Is there anyplace in particular that you would like to be touched?” Hannibal asked. Will’s face went red and he pressed it into the pillow. “That’s alright, you don’t have to tell me,” Hannibal said. “I’ll find out on my own.” 

The truth was, everything felt amazing. Whether Hannibal was touching his cock or his elbow, it all felt comforting and exciting, at the same time. All this flesh he carried around, and gained so little pleasure from, it seemed to have a purpose now, and he felt alive in a way that he hadn’t in a long, long time. 

But when Hannibal caressed Will’s belly with the flat of his hand, Will embarrassed himself by making a noise that he hadn’t yet made that evening, a soft little moan that made Hannibal grin. 

“Ah, so that’s where it is. Here.” Hannibal moved his hand to Will’s hip, then pulled him close so they could touch their bellies together, and press their stiff cocks in between. 

“Oh,” Will breathed. “Yes.” 

The two men had just enough softness in their middles to provide a nice snug place for their cocks to rub against one another, and they pushed with a pleasant but uneven rhythm, until Hannibal grabbed Will around the waist and rolled to the right, so Will was on top of him. He grasped Will’s behind with both hands, encouraging him to take his pleasure, and Will found he liked this even better, grunting happily as he rutted against Hannibal’s belly. 

As the minutes went by, Will seemed to be close to coming, but Hannibal suspected that perhaps he needed a little something more to push him over the edge. His hands were still on Will’s rump, and now he insinuated one finger into the cleft, to touch Will’s hole. 

“What about here, Will? Do you like to be touched here?” 

Will was so shocked, his response was to groan pathetically and ejaculate in three almost painfully intense spurts. 

Before he had a chance to fully recover his wits, Hannibal rolled them both over, and once he was on top, it took only a few strokes with his hand before he was coming, his eyes open, unblinking, and gazing at Will the entire time. When Will realized this, it sent a jolt through him like he was still coming. 

For a moment, as he came down and his breathing slowed, Will became disoriented, thinking, _Wait, how did I get here?_ It took a few seconds to remember: ah yes, he’d had a nightmare, and then gotten over here somehow. It was only an hour or so ago, but it seemed far in the past now. 

Hannibal grabbed the towel from the floor and tidied them both up with it, then dropped it back into the pile of discarded clothes. Will thought this seemed uncharacteristically untidy. It was his last thought before dropping off into a peaceful, dreamless slumber. 

 

*****

  

Will woke to the sound and smell of breakfast cooking. When he opened his eyes, he saw his clothes, laundered and neatly folded, sitting on the bureau, and getting up to put them on, he found that his cell phone and keys were there as well. On the floor were socks and shoes, which he had not shown up with. 

He dressed and shuffled out to the kitchen, where Hannibal was tending to an omelet. “Good morning,” said Hannibal. “You left your door unlocked last night when you left, so I took the liberty of sending one of my research assistants to let your dogs out and collect some of your things.” 

“Thank you,” was all Will could think to say. 

“Please have a seat.” Hannibal soon had Will’s omelet plated, and brought him a cup of coffee as well. “You are welcome to begin eating. Mine won’t be ready for a few more minutes, yet.” 

Will proceeded slowly nonetheless, so that by the time Hannibal joined him with his own breakfast, he wasn’t sitting there with an empty plate. 

“I don’t have any appointments today, and you haven’t gotten a call from Jack. I believe that means we are both free to do whatever we like today.” 

Will appeared deep in thought while he chewed, before he replied playfully, “Can we go back to bed?” 

Hannibal smiled at him. “We certainly can.”


	10. Chapter 10

Every retrieval that included Will required two vehicles, so that Will would not have to ride with the contained SCP. The ride back was always subdued, particularly if lives had been lost. The driver might not chat with Will at all; or, after what might have been hours of dealing with a creature that wanted to kill him _and_ was giving him massive headache, Will might forgo the passenger’s seat and lie down in the back.

Mile after mile through the desert in a car with no conversation wasn’t so bad if one had a vivid imagination, and was still in the throes of a new relationship. Will shamelessly daydreamed about Hannibal the whole way back to U-62. Some thoughts were quite elaborate, and not particularly sexual: places he would have liked for them to travel together, if not bound by their obligations and duties and oaths to secrecy. And the things he enjoyed that he wanted Hannibal to enjoy too, like fishing, or playing with his dogs, but which Hannibal probably found distasteful, neat and meticulous as he was.

But then there was the sexy stuff, as well. Lately Will had spent a lot of time dwelling on Hannibal’s teeth. He knew that Hannibal was self-conscious about them being crooked, and would hide them behind closed-lipped smiles. But when he allowed himself to be overcome with passion, he would sometimes grin or grimace, and show them, to Will’s surprise and delight. He associated the visibility of Hannibal’s top teeth with the feel and sound and smell of vigorous sex, and he imagined them in his mind the way another man might picture his lover’s quivering thighs.

But it wasn’t long before he began to doze. His sleep was dreamless, and interrupted whenever the car hit a pothole, or at the sound of a train when they were stopped at a railroad crossing. Each time he came back to consciousness, Will tried to resume his fantasy where he seemed to have left off – Hannibal holding him just a little roughly, pushing his legs up and apart – but in almost no time he’d drift back to sleep again.

It was just as well; every night of the five that he’d been gone, he’d been haunted by nightmares, and each time he woke from them, he was too afraid to go back to sleep. Without Hannibal, he had no one to comfort him. Even now, as excited as Will was at the thought of seeing Hannibal again, exhaustion continued to overtake him, his lascivious thoughts interrupted by glorious sleep.

“Agent Graham. We’re here.” The driver sounded like that was the second or third time he’d said it.

“Huh? Oh, right.” Will lifted himself from the seat and scooted out the back of the car. The driver had dropped him at the shed entrance; the vehicles were held deep in the facility, where it hurt Will to go.

He did have to go into the facility anyway, to file his report. He was also still quite in the mood to see Hannibal, but had no idea where to find him. He looked at his phone: four o’clock. He went into the little shed and took the elevator down.

On the top floor, in the Administrative wing, he dictated a brief report to an assistant on the retrieval. He only had to explain his own role; it was up to MTF leaders to go into grim detail about damages and casualties. When he’d finished, he made his way down the corridor that the Department of Psychology called home. He peeked in Hannibal’s office, but it was empty. He found the department assistant in her office. She checked the calendar.

“Doctor Lecter is supervising some testing with the [Impossible Puzzle](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-551),” she said. “But that’s scheduled to end at five, and he always returns to his office before he leaves for the day. I’m sure you’re welcome to wait for him there.” She smiled knowingly at him; she knew a lovesick man when she saw one.

Will winced at her shrewd smile. If one person in the facility knew, then soon everyone would know, if they didn’t already. But he took her up on her offer, and made his way back down the corridor.

Hannibal’s office was just as elegantly eclectic as his home, and Will easily occupied himself examining the art objects and relics until Hannibal returned.

“Hello, Will.” He seemed not at all surprised to find Will there. Perhaps the assistant had informed him. “I hope you haven’t been waiting here too long.”

“Not really. Are all of these paintings…I mean, I know they’re not anomalous themselves, but…”

“Yes, every piece of art in this office is a reproduction of anomalous work stored here at the facility. All of them memetically safe, of course. I like having a reminder of the beauty that lies within these dangerous objects.”

Will nodded like he could sympathize with that, although he most certainly could not. “How was your day?” he asked.

Hannibal took his coat off the coat rack, put it on, and grabbed his briefcase. “Very interesting,” he said, as he ushered Will out and down the corridor. “I watched many different people try to put together the [Impossible Puzzle](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-551). The results were diverse; I’m excited to study the puzzle further, to determine how it interacts so uniquely with different individuals.”

As they walked towards the elevator, Will said, “I always get the different puzzles confused. The Impossible Puzzle, that’s not the one that, when you put it together, it shows you what you’re afraid of?”

“No, the image depicted in the Impossible Puzzle is unremarkable. You’re thinking of the [Puzzle of Terror](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-226).”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I read the file on it, a while back. Did you ever put the Puzzle of Terror together?”

“I did, actually.”

“And what did it show you?”

“Exactly what I expected it to,” Hannibal said. The elevator doors opened, and they exited the little shed. “And how was your day?”

Will made a disapproving noise. “We’re officially out of the facility now, which means no more talking about work. Let’s do something fun with the rest of the day.”

“What did you have in mind?”

They strolled down the suburban street, deceptively idyllic, with all the horrors of the facility beneath their feet. Will suggested, “It’s too late for a picnic lunch, but how about a picnic dinner? It won’t get dark until eight-thirty.”

“I could put something together for us to take, down to that nice spot by the river?”

“That’s what I was thinking. And can we bring the dogs along?”

There was a slight pause, before Hannibal said, “I don’t see why not.”

They walked in silence for a while, which allowed Will to dwell on how he felt like he was about to burst with joy, just being next to Hannibal. He felt a little silly about it, but knew he wouldn’t feel quite as silly if he knew Hannibal felt the same way. He was afraid to ask.

They passed Will’s house first. “You go on ahead,” he told Hannibal. “I’ll get the dogs together, and we’ll come meet you at your place, and head to the river from there.”

“That will give me time to gather up what we’ll need,” Hannibal said, and they parted ways.

As he turned the key in his front door, Will could already hear the clicking of nails on hardwood as his dogs scrambled to greet his entrance. He took a few minutes to give each one a scritching or a tummy rub, then stood up and said, “Alright, listen up.”

The dogs all sat quietly, their attention fixed on their master. A few of them panted, which made their faces look deliriously happy, as Will assumed dogs always were.

“You guys need to be on your best behavior, okay? No jumping, no slobbering. Hannibal’s not crazy about dogs, but we want him to like all of us, got it?”

His pack continued to stare, uncomprehending but content.

“Right. Let’s go.”

He didn’t need leashes; when the dogs occasionally accompanied him to the river, they knew to stick close to him. If one ever wandered out of sight, a whistle was all it took to bring them back. He gathered the dogs to him on Hannibal’s porch, commanded them all to sit, and to stay sat, and only then did he knock on the door. Hannibal soon emerged, carrying a thermal picnic tote in lieu of a basket. Sometimes that happened; he would have something that seemed at first oddly modern for him, but with a moment’s thought, it made perfect sense that he would have the version of the item that was the most sensible and functional.

Despite the short notice, Hannibal had managed to put together a complete and picnic-appropriate meal. Once they’d found a shady spot near the river and put down the blanket, he pulled from the bag a selection of meats and cheeses, plus bread, crackers, hummus, strawberries, raspberries, and a thermos of lemonade.

The dogs frolicked, rolling in the grass, play-fighting, chasing rabbits and squirrels, cooling themselves off in the river. Lately Will had been working harder, and spending more time at Hannibal’s, and so had not been able to bring them out here for a while. Occasionally one of them would realize that the humans had food; Will might normally have been inclined to give them bits of what he had, but he kept them at bay for Hannibal’s sake, gently hissing the moment they set foot on the blanket.

The two men mostly ate in silence, listening to the water, and the wind in the trees, and the birds. Will had come to the river plenty of times, but it was always to fish, to be alone and retreat inside his mind. He would block out external stimuli and much as he was able, even when it was as peaceful as this. He’d never stopped to appreciate how beautiful it was, how soothing the sounds, how wonderful the breeze felt. Will wanted to blurt out, “This is just the best,” but on the other hand, he didn’t want to spoil the quiet.

When the remaining food was put away, Will laid on his back, watching the leafy braches sway above him. Hannibal remained seated.

“I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you when we met,” Will said.

“Think nothing of it. It was perfectly understandable.”

“If I’d had any idea how good you were going to treat me…”

“That is precisely why it is understandable. You expected no kindness because you had never been shown any before. And I must say, being the recipient of kindness suits you.”

Still gazing at the sky, Will felt his belt being unbuckled. Hannibal deftly opened Will’s jeans, exposing his cock to the fresh air for just a moment before he put it in his mouth and proceeded to give Will a slow, insouciant blow job. Will had never received one outdoors before, and found the experience at once peaceful and exhilarating.

When it was over, he put himself away, and then rolled to his side, ready to reciprocate. Hannibal laid down and watched intently as Will reached over and unzipped his trousers. His already-hard cock sprang free, and Will took one last look around, making sure no one else had wandered into their vicinity, before he set to work.

About halfway through, two of the dogs had begun to watch, but Will didn’t realize it, and it didn’t bother Hannibal.


	11. Chapter 11

Hannibal pushed the manila folder across the table, toward the brawny middle-aged D-class who was fidgeting like an eight-year old. Behind the observation glass, a new research assistant, Bard, was taking notes and monitoring the recording equipment.

“This will be the last activity,” Hannibal said.

“Is it reading? I don’t like reading.”

“It’s not reading at all,” Hannibal assured him. “Inside that folder is a photograph. I’m going to ask you simple questions, and after you answer some of the questions, I will tell you to open up the folder, look at [the photograph inside](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-228), and tell me what you see. Do you understand?

“Uh huh.”

“Questions first: You told us that you had been alive for twelve years and three months. Was that the length of time that you were inside the calculator?”

“Uh huh.”

“Now, does that mean that you can remember a time before being in the calculator?”

“You mean like a time where I was in a body like this one?”

“Perhaps not precisely like that one, but yes, in a human body.”

The D-class thought about this. “It’s hard to remember.”

“That’s fine. It’s important that you’re trying. Now open the folder and look at the photograph, please. What do you see?”

Having done this, the D-class stared at the photograph. “It says:

01000101010100100100100101000011  
00000000101011101000001010100110  
01000000100111001001001010000110  
10001010010111000100000010010010  
01000000100110001001001010010110  
10001010100010000100000010001010  
1010010010010010100001100101110.”

“I see. Close the folder, please.” Hannibal made a note to have the assistant transcribe and translate that answer later on. “Now, would you say that most of your existence has been pleasant, or unpleasant?”

“Unpleasant. Nobody ever leaves me in a room with a window anymore.”

“Did you used to have a room with a window?”

The D-class was playing absently with one of the buttons on his uniform shirt now. “All the time. It was nice.”

“I understand. Now what do you see in the photograph?”

The D-class opened the folder again. “It’s a picture of Eric.”

Hannibal tore a sheet of paper from his notepad, and pushed it, and a pencil, across the table. “Could you draw what Eric looks like in the photograph, for me?”

The D-class picked up the pencil and held it in his fist. He hunched over the paper and spent several minutes drawing, each stroke of the pencil being very short and clipped. When he was finished, he turned the paper around and showed it to Hannibal:

 
    
    
                 .::::,
               {{{{{;}}}}
              {{{{/ `}}}}}
             {}}}}} _  _|
             {{(`--(./-\.)
              {|     _\ |
               | \  __ /
               |  '.__/
           .'` \     |_
                '-__ / `-

 

 

“Is this how Eric looked in the photograph? Was he made with these symbols?”

“No, he looked normal. I’m not very good at drawing, sorry.”

“On the contrary, you’ve done very well. We’re finished now. I’d like you to wait here, and someone will come get you shortly.”

“Okay.”

Hannibal exited the room and met Bard in the observation chamber.

“I think we’ve learned all we can,” he said. “If the Soul Extractor is available at the moment, we can take [SCP-168](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-168) right back over to Operating Theater Zero-Seven and have him placed back in the calculator.”

Bard’s expression crumbled. “We’re not going to let him stay in the human body?”

“It was always our intention to return SCP-168’s soul to the calculator,” Hannibal replied, emphasizing the item number.

“But I mean, he’s not doing any harm. And what use do we have for a sentient calculator?”

“What use do we have for him?” Hannibal said, indicating the man on the other side of the observation glass. “This was a single, controlled experiment. We would be setting a dangerous precedent if we started swapping souls into bodies and leaving them there. [SCP-158](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-158) is not a therapeutic device. Its long-term effects have not been determined, and I hate to think what would happen if some gallant research assistant got carried away and imagined that he, or she, could use the device to liberate a misplaced soul that may have been imprisoned in an inanimate object five thousand years ago for a _very good reason_.”

 

*****

 

Hannibal had stopped off in his own office to make some additional notes, and when he reached Operating Theater 07, he found Bard and an orderly attempting to soothe the D-class, who had been given a sedative, judging by his slurring, but was still clearly agitated.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, writhing against his restraints. “You’re gonna put me back in that room! It’s boring and stupid!”

“Tighten those restraints, please,” Hannibal said to the orderly. “His movement may negatively affect the procedure.”

The device was operated rather like a claw game at a carnival. Viewing the D-class through the device’s special video display unit, Hannibal could see the heat signature that indicated where he needed to drop the tridactyl claw. The controls were operated intuitively, allowing him to capture the cluster of energy that was visible only on the VDU. The moment he extracted his target, the struggling D-class went limp as all brain function ceased. Hannibal swung the claw over to the neighboring operating table, which was occupied only by a graphing calculator. He released the lever to open the claw, and the heat signature on the VDU disappeared instantly.

Hannibal went around to the table where the calculator sat. “I am now going to input a simple equation,” he said, for Bard’s benefit, and she made a note on her clipboard.

Hannibal pressed a few buttons on the calculator, **6 ÷ 3 =** , and waited for a response. The screen went blank for two minutes and twelve seconds, and then a message appeared on the screen.

 

**I HATE YOU.**

 

Hannibal smiled, faintly but fondly, at the display. He looked up, expecting to see Bard watching him in anticipation, so she could report the result of the equation. Instead, he caught her glancing up at the clock. It was the fifth time in as many minutes that he’d seen her do so.

“Somewhere you need to be?” he asked her, and when she blushed, said, “A date tonight, perhaps? That’s alright, I understand. Tell you what: you and the orderly take the body down to the incinerator, and then you’re dismissed. I can finish up here.”

“Thank you, Doctor Lecter,” Bard said. She dropped her clipboard onto the foot of the gurney, and together she and the orderly hurriedly pushed the gurney through the swinging double doors and down the corridor.

That was ridiculously easy; Bard was so anxious to be done for the day, she hadn’t even thought to inquire about the fate of the D-subject’s soul, which was still stored in the glass container that Hannibal had deposited it in several hours previously. And when Hannibal thought about it, although Bard had been so fretful about SCP-168’s soul being removed from the D-subject and placed back in the calculator, she had not seemed to think it worth considering that to keep it where they’d put it would leave the D-subject’s soul stranded.

Absent-minded about loose ends in experiments, as well as unconcerned about the fate of D-subjects. Hannibal found her to be a very promising assistant, indeed.

He did not bother to deactivate the Soul Extractor. He was confident that he could safely leave it alone for a few minutes, and anyway, it took so much time to power up again. Instead, he just put the calculator in its transport container, and made his way over to the elevator and down to the containment levels.

 

*****

 

Hannibal had not invited Will to stay the night, only to have dinner with him, but when he answered the door, and found that Will was carrying an overnight bag, his response was, “Please come in. May I take that into the bedroom for you?”

Will didn’t quite catch what exactly what it was that Hannibal had cooked; everything Hannibal said on the matter was in French. It tasted like pork, so Will assumed that’s what it was. A few bites in, he remarked, “I just remembered, you were in my dream last night.”

“Oh?”

“Are you familiar with the [Eulogy Shrub](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-324)? They’re in the greenhouse at the facility.”

“I’m afraid the botanicals are outside of my area of expertise.”

“So there’s this bush, and wherever it’s planted, if you bury a sentient being in the ground beneath it, it will grow some berries. And the berries will have memories in them, belonging to whatever or whoever it was that you buried. If you eat a berry, you’ll relive one of their memories in your own mind, for just five minutes or so. It’s a total crapshoot, of course, what kind of memory you get.”

“And these berries were featured in your dream?”

“I dreamed that when no one was around, you brought me to the bush, and you told me that you had buried a dog underneath it. You gave me a couple of berries, so that I could eat them, because you knew, you somehow knew that I had always thought it must be nice to be a dog, to just live life and be happy and have no cares.” Will spoke mainly to his plate, because he knew this sounded silly, and he wondered if he should have mentioned it at all.

“You could never have that experience in real life,” Hannibal said. “Consuming those berries would give you a headache, because they are anomalous.”

“Exactly. It makes me sad. But in the dream I wasn’t even thinking about how I ought to have a headache.”

“Did you actually get to experience a dog’s memory, in the dream?”

“No, I woke up before that happened. But it was still a really good dream, because you had done this nice, thoughtful thing for me. Not that you don’t do nice, thoughtful things for me in real life.”

“Indeed. But were it within my power to give you that experience, I would.”

In response to this, Will smiled, and allowed Hannibal to meet his eyes, but just for a moment.

After dinner, Hannibal asked Will what he’d like to do for the rest of the evening. Will couldn’t tell if Hannibal was trying to be suggestive, but the truth was, Hannibal’s house was just so comfortable and tranquil, and it had been so long since he’d felt any peace of mind, so Will said he’d like to just spend a few hours reading. And Hannibal seemed amenable to this.

Will had brought a book with him, a novel he’d been trying to get through for several months, but Hannibal’s bookshelf was full of fascinating titles, and after browsing it for a while, he happened upon a novel by Richard Rhodes. “I didn’t know Rhodes wrote fiction, as well,” he remarked, plucking the book from the shelf. “I love his history stuff.”

Hannibal was already seated at one end of the sofa, reading something on his tablet. Will decided he would sit down with his back to the opposite arm of the sofa, and put his feet in Hannibal’s lap. Hannibal said nothing, did not even look up from his tablet, but did take one hand off it to gently grasp Will’s ankle, rubbing his thumb slowly back and forth over the lateral malleolus. Occasionally, his hand would stray, absently rubbing one or the other of Will’s feet, and it was merely pleasant, never ticklish.

Both men read in sweet silence for nearly an hour, before Will got restless, and wondered if he should try using his foot to rub Hannibal’s cock through his trousers. He’d barely had the thought when he looked up to see Hannibal smirking at his tablet.

“What’s funny?” Will said. Hannibal’s expression immediately went blank, which only made Will more suspicious. “Okay, what’s that about? Now you have to tell me.” Will put the book aside and climbed into Hannibal’s lap. “Is it something you’re reading?” Hannibal tried to keep the tablet away, but Will snatched it up playfully. The moment he recognized what it displayed, however, his heart leapt with ire.

“What the hell is this? You read TattleTruth.com?”

Hannibal appeared not at all chastened. “I’m a devoted reader, in fact.”

Will took another look at what Hannibal had been reading. In the blog entry, Freddie detailed her meticulous study of several missing persons reports which all had one thing in common: every woman (and they were all women) who had gone missing had left behind a recently-purchased fur coat. _Real_ fur, Freddie pointed out. She also noted that in a few cases, animal control had been called out to dispose of a crazed animal in the vicinity, shortly after the women disappeared.

The facts, as Freddie reported them, were accurate, if incomplete. Her speculation, though, was erroneous: she hypothesized that the furs were somehow attracting wild animals, which had devoured the coat-wearers in retribution.

“Why were you laughing at this?” Will demanded.

“I wasn’t laughing.”

“You were laughing inside.”

“Yes,” Hannibal admitted. “I find it entertaining.”

Will was burning with the knowledge that he was about to dive head-first into their first lovers’ quarrel. But this was as worthy a matter as any to be enraged about, so he did not hesitate. He did at least try to sound calm and collected, to be as adult as possible. “This isn’t entertainment. This is me and everyone else at the Foundation risking their lives every day to keep people safe. People died because of those furs. There are kids who are going to grow up without their mothers because of those furs. And tomorrow, I’m may have to go out on a retrieval mission, and be subjected to an equally gruesome fate. And then if Freddie puts some twisted half-made-up story about it on her blog, will you find that entertaining?”

“Will. Of course I would be devastated if anything were to happen to you. But don’t you find it just a tiny bit satisfying to learn the fate of the people who purchased these furs, who competed against other equally rich and spoiled people at an auction for the _privilege_ of owning these furs, at a time and in a place where wearing fur is considered barbaric and gauche? Doesn’t it give you the slightest smug satisfaction to see people get their comeuppance who think that their wealth means they can flout societal standards?

“Meanwhile,” he went on, “Miss Lounds continues to flail about with her theories, which are always far sillier than the truth. And that, I think, ultimately serves our cause, as her notoriety as a kook rubs off on anyone who has more down-to-earth speculation about organized management of the paranormal. _That_ is what I find amusing.”

“You know what?” Will dropped the tablet into Hannibal’s lap, and sprung up from the sofa. “I just realized, I don’t feel like spending the night after all. I think I’m just gonna go home.” He was trying to sound casual, as though his declaration was unrelated to the conversation they’d just had, but ended up cringing to hear the result come out of his mouth.

Hannibal didn’t say a word, not when Will went into the bedroom to get his bag, and not when he came back out, to put on his shoes. Will was obviously embarrassed about having a spat, but also sufficiently indignant that he was still willing to have it, and Hannibal did not wish to take that away from him. Will left without saying goodbye, and Hannibal got up to lock the door after him.


	12. Chapter 12

Will awoke in his own bed, comfortable and tranquil in the darkness. He had not been startled out of a nightmare, but had drifted to consciousness feeling warm and cozy, though he had gone to sleep covered only in a cotton sheet. And there was no light coming in under the blinds, which meant he had hours to go before his alarm would go off. He tried to roll onto his side, to snuggle into his pillow and sleep some more, but he found he could not. Something was keeping him firmly in place on his back, and it was then that he discerned the reason for the feeling of weight and warmth. 

Now he was _very_ awake. He could not see anything unusual, but he felt a definite presence in the room, something that he knew was…inhuman. And he could hear something; it was as soft as a rustle of leaves outside his window might be, though it was a much deeper sound, and was without a doubt coming from somewhere in his vicinity. 

In his field of vision there appeared a face, ovoid in shape, not quite humanoid, and where one might keep their mouth, nose, and eyes, this being instead had a collection of fine tendrils, silvery filaments that sought out his face. He could neither move nor speak, and so was powerless to deter them. He could only lie there in horror as the mass of tendrils caressed the skin of his face, with particular and delicate attention paid to the areas around his eyebrows and the lashes of his unblinking eyelids. 

He could clearly feel it, but it didn’t feel _like_ anything. It wasn’t ticklish, it wasn’t a pressure, it wasn’t warm or cold, it wasn’t wet or dry. And he for certain did not feel the slightest headache. That snapped him out of his fear. _This is a nightmare_ , he thought. He had learned this method when he was a teenager. _I’m having a nightmare, and I have the power to wake up from it. One…two…three._ On _three_ , nothing happened. But sometimes that was the case. He tried again. _One…two…three_. The toughest part had always been forcing his eyes to open, in order to wake himself up. _One…two…three. Three. Three._

Will jerked awake with the sun illuminating the room and his dogs beginning to stir. They knew when it was time to be let out. Looking around, Will saw nothing out of the ordinary; nothing that appeared to have been disturbed or dismantled in some attempt to get into his house. Will got up, opened the back door for the dogs, and took a look at the alarm panel there. He had covered the indicator light because its blinking bothered him, but when he removed the tape, it still lit up green. 

It had to have been a nightmare, Will told himself. Even if something had been able to materialize through the walls, the thing had had mass, and form, and would have triggered the areas under the rugs that were pressure-sensitive, as they’d walked around. 

Reassured, Will went into the bathroom and had a piss, noticing, as he had a moment for contemplation, that he seemed to lack that grubby feeling he always woke up with, from having rubbed his (usually) unwashed face against a pillow all night. It felt like he’d already washed it. He flushed, then washed his hands and dried them, after which was always the point in the morning when he wiped the crust out of his eyes, before proceeding to make coffee. But when he put the tips of his fingers against his eyes, he found that their corners were completely free of the slightest granule of eye crust. He thought about his dream, and his heart began to race so quickly, he felt slightly ill. 

He nearly jumped out of his skin when the klaxon on his phone blared. He picked it up; the text from Jack said: REPORT TO MY OFFICE. 

 

*****

  

When Will arrived in Jack’s office, Jack was on the phone, but he pointed sternly at Will, then at the empty chair. Will sat down, next to Allenby, the leader of Mobile Task Force Beta-7, whom he had last seen at Vector’s retrieval. 

“…Ripped apart by what?” Jack said into the phone. “I see. Alright.” He hung up, then immediately dialed another extension. “Harriet, put a reminder in my calendar: Catastrophic containment breach scheduled for four years, eleven months, and two days from now. Thank you.” He dumped the phone in its cradle and snapped at Will, “Because [that’s what I’ll need](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-552), in four years, eleven months, and two days: another reason for you to traipse all over leaving a path of destruction in your wake.” 

Will said nothing. 

“Before I give you your assignment, we need to talk about what happened last week. Agent Strike reported that he had to forcibly restrain you from putting down an anomalous raccoon at a retrieval. And this is two days after you destroyed the chocolate fountain. I’m here to tell you, Will: one destruction is an understandable accident, two is a red flag, but three is not an option. I am not going to tolerate you taking matters into your own hands on retrieval missions. You are there to locate anomalous objects, not neutralize them.” 

“If we had explained to the killer ants that we were only there to contain them, not neutralize them, do you think it might have calmed them down?” 

“Will, you have worked here for…several months, now. You have been thoroughly educated and trained on containment procedures, and why they have to be the way they are. We did not have a complete understanding of that fountain’s properties. What if it was holding an evil spirit, and now that the fountain is destroyed, it’s just moved on to another object?” 

“If that is the case, then you can just ask Doctor Lecter to keep an eye on Freddie Lounds’ blog for news about it. He gets a kick out of reading her sensationalist bullshit, so he’ll know right away if some ants start pouring out of an experimental aircraft in Groom Lake, or the Face on Mars.” 

“Is this how you handled things when you were in Homicide, Will? Did you just push aside your partner as he got out the handcuffs, and shoot the suspect?” 

Will bristled. “Don’t think for a minute that this is anything like being a cop,” he said, his hands trembling and his mouth going dry. “If a burglary goes sideways and the intruder gets shot, we can get the shooter into custody without a Faraday cage or a degree in quantum physics. But I can assure you, if I had ever been called out and found the suspect giving bystanders Ebola, or devouring them whole, you’re god damn right I would shoot first and ask questions later.” 

Will looked to Allenby, hoping for a nod of approval. Instead, Allenby looked dreadfully uncomfortable, like he was ready to ask to be excused, just as soon as he could get a word in edgewise. 

“If you think for one second that your antics won’t have consequences,” Jack said, “you can think again. I promise you, I will put you in a straitjacket and wheel you to retrievals if that’s what it takes to keep you under control. Is that what you want?” 

“Maybe that’s what I need. Because it’s getting harder and harder to do my job.” 

“How is it getting harder? I’m not sending you out there alone, am I?” 

It was true, on retrievals Will had the best bodyguards that anyone could ask for. But last night, there had been no one to guard him. How could they, when he didn’t even know what he needed to be guarded from? “It’s not what’s happening when I’m doing retrieval,” Will said calmly. 

Jack didn’t seem to know how to interpret this. “If there’s a problem, I want to know about it. Is there a problem?” 

Will wanted to tell Jack so badly, about the nightmares, about the stag that followed him around. The pain and stress of retrievals was one thing, but now misery was seeping into every corner of his life. He might have told Hannibal, if the time had ever been right, but he simply could not tell Jack, not when he still felt capable of working. “No,” he said. “There’s no problem. Everything’s fine.” 

“You have to keep things in perspective. I know it makes you angry, what these things do to people. But that’s why I need you. And I need you to let the containment specialists do their job. I really cannot deal with you being a troublemaker right now, not with all the containment breaches that have been happening.” 

“Maybe you could tell me a little more about that. I _was_ a detective, when I worked Homicide.” 

Jack raised his eyebrows, but his eyes remained hooded, saying to Will, without words, _You can’t seem to do your own job properly anymore, and now you want to do mine?_ But whether it was lingering faith in Will, or desperation for any kind of help that might be available, he explained: 

“Nothing about the new rash of containment failures suggests that there is a structural flaw, or any change in the properties or abilities of anything that broke containment. And when you eliminate the containment itself _and_ the things being contained, what you have left is someone outside the containment units causing the breaches. This suspicion was bolstered when we did a sweep of the reliquary storage wing, and found six objects missing from their containment. These objects were not stored anywhere near where the physical breaches occurred, and they had no way of leaving autonomously.” 

“Any leads on who might have taken them?” 

“We went down the list of every object that’s gone missing, under any circumstance, with the intention of questioning everyone who had accessed any of them in the last six months. Then we found out, some of those objects hadn’t been touched for testing or maintenance in _years_. Every time an object’s containment is opened, it’s logged, but for four of the objects, the computer showed us no access since initial containment.” 

“Who here has the ability to alter the access logs?” 

“No one. The system was built that way, to prevent a situation like this from occurring.” 

“Can the items that are missing tell us anything about the motivation for taking them? Were they all weapons? Or religious in nature?” 

“There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, not the ones that disappeared, and not the ones lost in containment breaches. If every object was highly valued by Marshall, Carter, and Dark, or if everything were a weapon, or if someone had demanded a ransom, we might have a lead. But some of the items that have gone missing are just stupid. Why would anyone want [a book](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1195) that demands that you tell it a story? Is someone going to unleash [Cassy](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-085) as a part of their scheme to take over the world?” 

“Can I make a suggestion? If someone has a clear goal, then they would have to know that it could be deduced, if they only took the items they wanted. Anyone intelligent enough to bypass Foundation security would be smart enough to cover their tracks. Amongst all those seemingly random objects, there are the items that the person actually wants, and they’ll have something in common. Finding the true common denominator will be your golden ticket.” 

“Duly noted,” Jack said. He was either unimpressed with Will’s reasoning, or pretending to be unimpressed, so as not to make Will think he was forgiven for his transgressions in the field. “I’ll pass your advice along to Internal Affairs. In the meantime, I’m sending you to Slaughter.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Slaughter: It’s a small town in the foothills of the Rockies. The county sheriff is an embedded Foundation agent, and he’s alerted us to some weird reports coming from the hospital and the city jail. People in the town are extracting their own flesh and extremities and feeding them to others – sometimes force-feeding. All signs point to an outbreak of [Charity Worms](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-833), and they were an object of concern after the last containment breach.” Jack gestured to Allenby. “You will accompany Agent Allenby and Mobile Task Force Beta-7 to Slaughter and identify every person in the town infected with the worms as well as every ounce of contaminated meat. The Task Force will see to it that anthelmintics are administered, all contaminated meat is destroyed, and any suspicious distributors are neutralized. The _Task Force_ will do that, not you.” 

Crawford handed Allenby a folder with all the relevant details: SCP-883’s file, information about the town, and a signed authorization to acquire a massive quantity of albendazole from the dispensary. Once Allenby took it, Jack pointed at him and said, “And if _you_ allow Special Agent Graham to so much as swat a fly, I am demoting you to D-class. Is that understood?” 

“Understood, sir.” 

“Good. Get out of here, both of you.” 

As soon as they were out of earshot, Allenby said, “Do you hear about that last containment breach? Craziest shit I ever read.” 

“What’s that?” 

“You know about that [Fertile Soil](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-124), that you put stuff in it and it grows super-size? Someone put a soul in it!” 

“A sole? Like a fish?” 

“No, a soul, S-O-U-L.” Allenby tapped his hand over his chest for effect. “Who does that? What researcher in their right mind looks at _any_ SCP and says, ‘Oh, gee, I’ll put a soul in it, what’s the worst that could happen?’”

 

*****

 

Slaughter didn’t have a hospital, per se, just a little clinic, but it was packed that day with victims of the Charity Worms. Will had a splitting headache before he was even in the door, but with Sheriff Brighton’s help, they managed to rearrange all the patients in the exam rooms, the waiting room, and the urgent care rooms, so that Will could encounter them one at a time, and determine who was infected and who was not. Those who were infected were treated for their self-inflicted wounds and given albendazole. Those who were not – some of whom were there for unrelated matters, some of whom were there because of injuries sustained when they resisted being fed their loved one’s flesh – were far fewer, and were isolated and treated in a single, separate exam room. 

It only took a moment for Will to identify each infected individual, but as they moved along, they tried to chat with him: 

“You’re not going to stop us from helping people, are you?” said one woman. Will looked at her bandaged arm and thigh, recognized the hasty but skilled bandaging of an EMT. 

“We’re here to help _you_ ,” he said, and tried to move her along. 

“Did you bring sharper knives? All I had was a steak knife, and I feel like I could have done a much better job if I’d had something sharper.” 

Will pointed again, to indicate where she needed to go. She joined a group of similarly inclined victims, whose blood was seeping through their bandages. 

Rather than greet the others when she joined them, the woman instead immediately began boasting: “My son said the meatloaf I made him was delicious. I was so proud of what I did, and it was so beautiful that he appreciated what I gave of myself. I want my boy to have only the best and most nutritious things.” 

In the spirit of true maternal one-upmanship, another woman said, “Well, just as soon as I can, I’m going to take one of my kidneys out, and cook it for my youngest, Emily. I mean, I have two kidneys, and you only need one, and kidneys have so many vitamins in them!” 

Meanwhile, the MTF was interviewing the infected about where they’d been buying meat, or dining out. But it was a small town, and everyone named the same two grocery stores and three restaurants. It was entirely possible that all the establishments got their meat from a single supplier. 

Once everyone in the clinic had been identified and separated, Allenby assigned one MTF member to stay behind and administer Class A amnestics, and ordered everyone else to regroup at the van. He handed out photo cards that would identify everyone on his team as a health inspector. “We probably caught the majority of people who are currently infected, but we need to find the source of the contaminated meat.” Allenby assigned each team member to a restaurant or grocery store, instructing them to find out who their meat supplier was. 

“Sheriff Brighton,” he went on, “is going to take Will to sweep the schools for infected individuals. I never thought I’d say these words, but I’m hoping they get their meat straight from the federal government…as opposed to whoever’s selling to the commercial establishments. Alright, let’s go!” 

Slaughter had two schools, one for Kindergarten through 6th grade, and one for both junior-high and high schoolers. They began with the elementary school. It was a small, California-style campus, which made things easier, because they would only have to enter the building if and where Will sensed something anomalous; otherwise, they could stick to the outside, and not frighten the kids. Accompanied by the principal, they began with the cafeteria and kitchen, and breathed a collective sigh of relief when Will felt not the slightest bit of pain. Then they walked along the classroom buildings, silently, so Will could concentrate. 

Will stopped in front of room 202, and said, “There’s something in this one.” 

The Principal knocked on the door, then opened it. “Mrs. Dryden, could I ask you to step out here for a moment, please?” 

A woman appeared in the doorway, looking concerned, but when she saw Will standing there, her face brightened for a moment. “Oh my goodness, Will, is that you?” 

“Wendy?” Will would never have expected to see Wendy all the way up here, not when she’d seemed so rooted in New Orleans, where he had last seen her. 

“What are you doing here?” She looked anxious again now. “What is the Sheriff doing here?” 

Sheriff Brighton took her aside and explained. “Ma’am, we’ve had a report of a, uh, rabid dog in the area, and we have reason to believe that a child may be hiding it, thinking he can save it from…well, you know.” 

“Oh. I understand. But I’m quite sure if there were a dog in my classroom, I’d know it.” 

“It’s just a quick look, ma’am, and we’ll be on our way.” 

She nodded, and Brighton gestured for Will to join him in the classroom. 

Mrs. Dryden spoke in a gentle tone to her class of second-graders: “Everyone, this is Sheriff Brighton. Do you remember, he was here in September, to talk to you about wearing your seat belts? And this is Will Graham. They’re here because they’re looking for a dog that’s very sick. Has anyone here seen a sick dog lately?” 

There was a chorus of scattered “No”s, but mostly silence. Will walked slowly up and down the rows of desks. He avoided looking at Wendy, at least until he had a chance to explain himself. He suspected one of the children in the front row was infected, as the pain became more intense the closer he was to the front of the room. 

“I hope no one has touched any strange dogs,” Wendy said. “Has anyone done that?” 

Once again, the children replied in the negative and shook their heads. She strolled from one end of the room to the other, looking for any children wearing guilty expressions. As her path crossed with Will’s, the pain became almost unbearably intense. He gave a nod to Brighton and Allenby, and took her aside. 

“Everything’s fine here,” Will whispered. “We’re going to step back outside. How soon until class is dismissed?” 

Wendy looked at the clock. “Only about five minutes.” 

“Any chance you and I can chat afterwards?” 

“Oh, please! I’d love to catch up!” 

“Good, okay, see you in a few minutes.” 

The men left the room, but stayed by the door. Will explained quietly, “That’s Wendy Bentley. She was my high school sweetheart.” 

The Sheriff looked at the door. “Placard says ‘Mrs. Dryden.’” 

“Does it? Huh. I guess she got married.” 

“Tough break, man,” said Allenby. 

“No, no, it’s fine. After we graduated, she went to some art school in Rhode Island, and we lost touch for a couple years. And then, I guess she didn’t have what it took, because she came back to Louisiana to work in the family restaurant. I used to always have coffee there, when I was a cop. We were just friendly like that, for years, way longer than we’d been, you know,” Will waved his hand dismissively, “boyfriend and girlfriend.” 

“She ever ping your radar before?” Brighton said, tapping his own temple. 

“No, not in all that time.” 

The bell rang, and the kids poured out of the classroom without delay. Wendy followed closely behind the last child, and invited Will in. “It’ll just be a second,” he said to Brighton and Allenby. 

“It’s so good to see you Will, although I must say the circumstances are a little odd. What brings you out here?” 

Will kept his distance, as much as he was able without seeming weird, because the closer to her he stood, the more his headache made it difficult to focus on the conversation. “The thing about the dog,” he said, “that wasn’t quite the truth. We’re actually investigating some bad meat that’s made its way into town.” 

“Oh. You’re with the…FDA now, or something?” 

“Sort of. We’re actually having some trouble tracking down where the contaminated meat has been distributed. We’re trying to find common denominators in where people have been eating. Have any of your kids been sick in the past couple days?” 

“Just one, but he’s got the chicken pox.” 

“What about you?” 

“Oh, I don’t eat meat anymore. I gave it up for Rick, he’s very serious about veganism. You remember, the last few weeks you came to the diner, I told you about Rick?” 

“Oh, yeah, sure. You met him online?” 

“Yep. And, well, we got married!” She laughed, like it was a silly thing to do. 

“Wow, you didn’t waste any time,” Will said, but with good cheer. 

“We dated for a year, I wouldn’t exactly call it a whirlwind.” 

Will tried to do the math in his head. It hadn’t even been a year since he’d left the police force to join the Foundation. Perhaps she was rounding up. 

“Rick got a job working at the big server farm they’re building out here, and by that time I was just about done with my teaching degree, so, that’s how I got here.” 

In all the time Will had visited Wendy at the diner, she’d never mentioned that she was going for another degree. But then, he had no idea how long she would have had to go back to school in order to accomplish that. And anyway, it wasn’t important right now. He had to focus on the matter at hand: If Wendy was a vegan, there was no way she’d have a trichinoid. 

“Are you sure that you haven’t felt odd lately? At all?” 

“Well, since you mention it,” she said, blushing, “I did faint a few months ago. Just a month after the wedding, actually. And then for a while after that I was throwing up, like constantly. Turns out I have a little parasite.” She grinned when she saw the look of utter shock come over Will’s face. “Don’t worry, you won’t catch it. It’s the kind only women get…and only for nine months.” 

“You…oh!” Now Will looked even more horrified, but Wendy didn’t understand. She laughed and said, “Admit it, you thought I just got fat!” 

“No, I…it never occurred to me that…” Will’s heart was in his throat, and he asked, “Have you…This is going to sound like a weird question, but have you had an ultrasound yet?” 

“I’m having my first one on Tuesday,” she said. “I’ll be eleven weeks. We’re really excited!” 

“Well, congratulations,” Will said, forcing a smile. “Listen, it’s been good talking to you, but I’ve got to get a move on. The Sheriff’s waiting for me.” 

“Of course, of course. It was so good to see you again! Can I give you my number? Maybe once you get this whole bad meat thing worked out, we can have you over for coffee? I’d love for you to meet Rick.” 

“Um, sure, go ahead and write that down.” Will wondered if he might actually have a chance to do that, before he left town. He was _very_ interested to meet Rick. But for the time being, all he could do was take her number and say goodbye. As he continued his sweep along the building, he said gravely to Brighton, “She’s a vegan, so it’s highly unlikely she has the worms. But she is pregnant, and it sounds like she’s experienced time loss, or some sort of time discrepancy.” 

“Just like Agent Scully did,” Brighton remarked. 

Will rolled his eyes. “Sure, yeah, like Agent Scully did.” 

Allenby said something in a reassuring tone, but Will didn’t really hear it. He thought about the way he’d behaved on his recent retrieval missions, and wondered what he would have tried to do to Wendy, having discovered what he’d just discovered, if he didn’t know her at all.


	13. Chapter 13

Among the places in the U-62 facility that Will had a fairly easy time with was the library – not a research center, but an ordinary library for the staff who lived on-site. Will liked it for two reasons: first, it was little-used, because staff who wanted to read books typically just downloaded them onto their tablets; second, because the library had stringent security procedures, to ensure that SCPs did not contaminate the collection, and so Will was never bothered with headaches when he was there. 

The library had a bank of computers with which one could access any Foundation file, provided one had the proper clearance. And so Will came here, rather than the research wing, when he needed to look up a file for some reason. 

Will was not entirely sure why he was bothering to look up the keyword “stag” in the Foundation files. If the stag he kept seeing was a legitimate anomalous object, it would have made his head hurt; it had been that close more than once. But he did not want to believe that it was not an SCP, because the alternative was that the stag he was seeing – a stag that followed him around, and somehow bore black fur and feathers – did not exist at all, and he was hallucinating. The nightmares were also making him anxious, but in a different way; plenty of Foundation staff had completely mundane nightmares and sleep paralysis – it was an occupational hazard, like ordinary civilians would get carpal tunnel syndrome. 

A search for the words “stag” and “deer” did turn up some results (and he learned a new word: _[cervine](http://www.scp-wiki.net/system:page-tags/tag/cervine#pages)_ ) but nothing that seemed to relate to what he had been seeing. He tried a few variations, such as “buck,” and also “black feathers” and “antlers,” but none of the results were relevant. This made him anxious, but he wasn’t ready to accept that he was crazy just yet. 

He was loath to visit her site, but he had to admit that Freddie Lounds had managed to get the dirt on several SCP items, and even though her blog was mostly speculation and outright fabrication, if she’d seen an unusual stag lately, Will had no doubt she’d have written about it. He opened a browser window and typed in the URL. Two headlines greeted him: WAS THE NORTHERN BAJA 6.8 CAUSED BY AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE[?](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-219) and ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS BROUGHT US THIS CURSED COPPER [BOWL](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1120). He found the search bar, typed in all the same terms he’d searched for among the SCP files, but came up empty-handed. 

For the first time, he stopped trying to ignore what had been happening to him, and really concentrated on it. When and where did the stag appear? There didn’t seem to be a pattern. He’d seen it in once at U-62, a couple of times near home, and on three retrieval missions. But thinking on it a little more, it occurred to him that the stag always appeared just before or just after he had a particularly terrible nightmare. Perhaps if he looked up SCPs that affected one’s sleep, it might provide some clue. He went back to the Foundation database, this time searching for keywords like “dream,” “nightmare,” and “sleep.” There were a lot more of these than deer-related SCPs, and reading them all proved to be agonizing, because each one made him wonder if it would be coming for him next. But nothing made his stomach turn like the entry he found on The Groomers:

_In experiments, it was discovered that specimens of SCP-760 feed on human secretions and dead matter. When presented with a sleeping human, SCP-760 will proceed to carefully position itself over the subject, on to their chest if the subject is sleeping on their back, and begin vocalizing at approximately 20dB for a period of █ to ██ minutes. This vocalization appears to promote slow-wave sleep in ██ % of subjects, greatly reducing the chance of the subject awakening. The exact mechanism responsible for this effect is unknown, but is thought to involve [DATA EXPUNGED]. In the remaining █ %, the subject is largely unaffected by the vocalization and may regain some level of consciousness. Several subjects who have report this experience have likened it to sleep paralysis._

_After this period, SCP-760 will use its tongue to consume any easily accessible secretions present on the subject including ocular discharge, hair oils, dead skin cells, pimples, and [REDACTED]. This process has been observed to be largely harmless to the subject._

It had not shocked him terribly when he’d had the nightmare about encountering SCP-378 again. To him, at the time, it had been no different than the dreams he sometimes had about being back in high school and having lost his class schedule, panicking because he didn’t know where he needed to be. Past experiences often represented present anxieties in dreams. But he was sure he had never heard of The Groomers before. How could he have had such a thoroughly accurate dream about them? 

He refused to entertain the idea that he had actually been in the presence of a Groomer. For one thing, the file said that they had been securely contained since long before he’d started working for the Foundation. And if one had been that close to him, he would have been in agonizing pain. 

In fact, every theory he’d come up with had been rendered invalid by this fact. If he was hosting an anomalous entity – something like [SCP-1150](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1150), who would use his body while he slept – he would feel it. If he’d consumed something, he’d have felt it. It was getting more and more difficult to deny that the only possibility was that he was going insane. And if he wasn’t there already, he was swiftly being driven there by his inability to work out just what was happening to him. Even after he’d discovered what his headaches meant, he had still managed to feel normal here, to separate his anxieties and dreams from the idiosyncrasies of his new reality. But he didn’t feel normal anymore. 

He dared not mention any of this to anyone, for fear that his superiors would panic and he would be pulled from retrieval duty. What he did might be miserable work, but he was the only one who could do it, and he didn’t want to stop. 

When it came down to it, though, the person he really wished he could talk to about it was Hannibal. Of all the people at the Foundation, he believed that Hannibal might be the only one he could trust to keep his secret. Not to mention that Hannibal was extremely knowledgeable, and might even have a solution. Two days ago, Will would have considered risking it, but his storming out had been so horribly awkward. He wished that in all the time he and Hannibal had been close, Hannibal had been around just _once_ when Will saw the stag, to reassure him, or validate him, or _something_. But Will never seemed to see it, or have any nightmares, when Hannibal was nearby. 

Will thought his heart would burst at this realization. God, things really had been pleasant, life really had been easier, when he and Hannibal were together. Not only was Hannibal’s home a sanctuary, not only was his cooking a comfort, but his very presence had a positive effect even on Will’s subconscious. What it was about Hannibal that drove his anxieties away, Will did not know; he hadn’t put a lot of thought into it, and frankly he didn’t want to, for fear that the effect would crumble under close examination. 

Will might not be able to make the stag or the nightmares go away entirely, but Hannibal could help him fend them off, and wouldn’t it be a weight off his shoulders if he could just confide in Hannibal about them? 

He logged off the computer and stood up, dizzy and disoriented, as if surprised to find himself still in the quiet, well-lit library, after so much time spent staring at SCP profiles on the dark monitor. It dismayed him that he was even more anxious and confused now than he had been when he’d sat down, but at least he knew what the very next thing was that he had to do. 

 

*****

  

Once again, Hannibal opened his door to find Will, carrying his overnight bag and looking sheepish. 

“What’s for dinner?” Will said, with a gentle smile. 

To Will’s relief, Hannibal stepped to one side and invited him inside. “Please come in. There’s plenty of gnocchi, or there will be momentarily.” 

Will followed Hannibal to the kitchen, where he promptly resumed tending to two pans on the stove. Will just stood there, bag still in hand, perplexed. “So, this is it? We’re just going to carry on like nothing happened? We’re not going to, like, have a moment, where I fall into your arms and sob about how wrong I was, and I know now that I can never be happy without you? And then you say something back that’s kind of comparable to that, and then we forget all about dinner and have passionate make-up sex?” 

Hannibal was stirring something in one of the pans; Will smelled garlic and gorgonzola. “Is that what you would like to happen?” Hannibal said. 

“Well, now that I can smell the cooking, I guess I would rather eat first. And when I was picturing us making up in my head, it was pouring rain, and I was all soaked and pathetic-looking on your doorstep. But it’s just kind of overcast right now, so…yeah.” 

He sat down, just dropping the bag by his chair, and Hannibal plated the pasta while he made small talk about the things he’d been up to at the facility. Mainly, he talked about his session with that invisible woman, whom Will suspected he’d brought up just to make Will jealous: she could have all sorts of discussions with Hannibal that Will couldn’t, about art and classical music and literature. 

Then there was a lull in the conversation, and they ate quietly for a while. Then Hannibal broke the silence by saying, “Also, Jack called me into his office on Tuesday, to talk about you. He says you’ve been very naughty, as of late.” 

“Please, I didn’t come here so you can scold me, too.” 

“On the contrary. I believe your approach, when applied selectively, can produce positive results. And even if such efforts are not one hundred percent successful, I am always curious to see what will happen.” 

“So did you tell Jack that?” 

“You overestimate my influence. I can’t change the way the Foundation works. But I want to do what I can to help you cope with it. What you do is not good for you.” 

Will chewed thoughtfully, then mused, “I guess it’s my bad luck that I’m good for it. But if Jack doesn’t like the way I do things, he’s welcome to try to do them without me.” 

“And did you tell Jack that?” 

Will smirked. “You overestimate my desire to have a boot in my ass.” 

“Jack may not like what you’ve done, but he has no choice but to be confident in you, because he has no one else to take your place. But you have to be confident in yourself, in your ability to cope with difficulty, because it is your confidence that gives you stability.” 

Will put his fork down. “You give me stability.” 

“But what about when I am not present?” 

“That was something I thought I might actually talk to you about…” 

Hannibal stood up. “Why don’t we talk about it in the kitchen, while I wash up?” 

“I’ll help.” Will plucked his napkin from his lap, folded it on the table, and stood up to follow Hannibal into the kitchen, carrying his plate and silverware. “Least I could do.” 

Hannibal gestured to where he wanted Will to set the dishes, and then indicated where Will might stand if he wanted to do the drying while Hannibal washed. 

Once again, Will found it difficult to say what he wanted to say, the words sticking in his throat. Hannibal filled the silence again: “Working for the Foundation, I have sacrificed some luxuries. I am not often able to procure the ingredients I need to prepare the dishes I’d like to make. I’d love to cook for you _jamon iberico_ or _rôti de cuisse de boeuf_ sometime. Perhaps in the future, when our circumstances aren’t so bound by the Foundation’s need for secrecy. But I do the best I can with what I have.” 

“I would never have thought that you were working at any kind of disadvantage,” Will said. “Everything you make is…I can’t imagine that it could be any better.” 

Hannibal wiped down the sink as Will dried the last dish, and when it was safely in the dish rack, he closed in on Will and took him roughly by the hips, then slid his hands up Will’s back. 

“Now, you said you had something to tell me. I believe you were going to say wonderful things about me, and how much you missed me? Though I must warn you, I am very susceptible to flattery, and would become quite pliant and suggestible if you were to be too generous.” 

Will clung to Hannibal, putting his chin against Hannibal’s shoulder. He didn’t want Hannibal to see his face, how his mouth twisted at Hannibal’s naïve attempt at levity. “I’ve been seeing…things,” he sobbed. “And I have nightmares.” 

“I should think so, doing the job that you do.” 

“No, not like…not like you’d expect. I think I might be going crazy.” 

Hearing this, Hannibal held him tighter, and rocked him back and forth just slightly. “Nonsense. You always behave in a perfectly reasonable manner, so far as I have seen.” 

“That’s because you’re the only one who makes me feel normal!” Will wrestled one arm free to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand. “See? This is exactly what I thought would happen. I’d end up in your arms, crying, but also kind of having an erection.” 

Hannibal’s voice dropped considerably lower, and he murmured, “Would you like me to take you to bed, Will?” 

Will sniffled and nodded against Hannibal’s shoulder. 

Without delay, Hannibal led him into the bedroom, keeping a comforting hand on the small of his back. He paused, just briefly, to open one of his dresser drawers and remove a bottle, which he placed on the nightstand. Then, he set to work divesting Will and himself of their clothing. This always entailed a little awkwardness, as buttons refused to yield under eager fingers, and one tried to remove one’s shoes before one’s trousers. But it resulted in a little soft embarrassed laughter from Will, and Hannibal laughed too, to encourage him. Only then did he playfully wrestle Will onto the bed, rolling him so that they lay on their sides, Will’s back pressed to Hannibal’s front. 

From behind him, Will heard the sound of the bottle being squeezed, and Hannibal’s heavy, slippery cock was sliding into the cleft of his ass, and further, between his thighs. With his still-slick hand Hannibal reached around to jerk Will off, shoving his other arm under Will’s side to grasp him around the middle and hold him steady. 

“I cannot guarantee your safety,” Hannibal whispered to him, “so long as you continue to do your duty for the Foundation. But I promise you, whenever you are by my side, I will protect you, no matter where the danger comes from.” 

Then, he began to fuck between Will’s thighs, and with the same rhythm he used to stroke his cock, using Will’s body ferociously but pleasuring him intently at the same time. 

Held so securely against Hannibal’s body, Will was unable to do anything but kick his legs and curl his toes. Each time Hannibal pulled back, his cock rubbed against Will’s hole, and each time, Will thought Hannibal might try to push it inside. He was so sensitive there, and feeling the heat, the insistence of Hannibal’s cock, it would be so simple, so natural, for Hannibal to just push it right up inside him. But he never did, and it became a torment. Will had never been penetrated before, and he was a little afraid of it, but he wanted it just the same. 

“Are you gonna put it in?” Hannibal was holding him so tightly, Will barely had the air to speak. 

Hannibal asked, “Is that what you’d like?” Will felt a beautiful ache in his balls as the head of Hannibal’s cock bumped against them. 

“Yes. I want it.” Hannibal was rubbing his dick just right, the circle of his fingers tight as it stroked back and forth over the crown. 

“How do you think it would feel?” 

“Good. It would feel so good.” The head of Will’s cock was suddenly exquisitely sensitive, and he didn’t know if his writhing was an attempt to speed his orgasm or deny it. 

Hannibal’s inhalations against his skin were as powerful as his exhalations as he placed open-mouthed kisses to the back of Will’s neck, and Will realized that Hannibal was smelling him, and tasting him. Hannibal breathed, “Are you imagining me penetrating you right now?” 

“Yeah. _Unh, oh_ …” Will had one hand free, to claw at the sheets as his own thoughts pushed him over the edge and he came. He did not think that Hannibal could have gripped him any harder, but the strength of his hold increased, and the feel and the very idea of it seemed to prolong Will’s orgasm. He groaned helplessly, and his spasming body struggled against Hannibal’s clutches. 

When his cock became too sensitive to be touched, he pushed Hannibal’s hand away, and Hannibal moved it to Will’s hip, holding him still and shoving his cock harder between Will’s slick thighs, until he stopped abruptly and sighed into Will’s ear, giving Will a shiver. He felt like all the misery had been wrung out of him, leaving only sweetness and relief. 

The bed was a mess of sweat and semen. Hannibal yanked the sheet out from under them, dabbed it between Will’s legs to clean him up a bit, and then discarded it on the floor. As the perspiration cooled on their bodies, he pulled the thin blanket over them. 

“Maybe next time,” Hannibal said softly, and even as relaxed as he was, Will felt a final rush. He wanted the next time _now_. He wondered if, perhaps, he could keep Hannibal and himself awake by talking, and then in twenty minutes or so they could go again. He rolled over to face Hannibal, and opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of what to say. 

“Something on your mind?” Hannibal said. 

“You said you’d protect me. I used to know that I was safe if my head didn’t hurt. Now I never feel safe. How can ordinary people ever feel secure, not knowing whether something terrible might be surrounding them at that very moment?” 

“Your file says your abilities are to be used sparingly. Do you feel that you’re being used sparingly?” 

“I’m not being _forced_ to go on retrieval missions.” 

“I wouldn’t say forced either. _Manipulated_ would be the word I’d use. Jack talks like the fate of the world rests solely on your ability, then lets you believe that it’s your choice to do the work. And when a person realizes that they’re being manipulated, they often behave recklessly to assert control.” 

“But it is my choice to do the work. You know that.” 

“I know that you’d rather suffer than see other innocents lose their lives. I imagine Jack feels the same way, otherwise he might have relented, when it came to sending you on retrievals.” 

Will stroked down Hannibal’s arm, then back up, and played with his chest hair a little bit. “And you? How do you feel about it?” 

“When you talk about your motivation for continuing, you pay lip service to the noblest concepts – to a human being’s obligation to protect other human beings. But when you were actually face-to-face with Vector…when you watched those ants pour out and devour people alive…was your altruism truly what motivated you to destroy them?” 

Will dropped his hand. Why had he said anything? Why couldn’t he just have made small talk about something sexy, until Hannibal could get hard again? Will rolled onto his back with a sigh and said, “I don’t want to answer that without explaining something to you.” 

“By all means.” 

“My dad was the one who raised me. My mom wasn’t really around. And when you’re a kid, sometimes you don’t understand the reality of things. At the time, I thought my dad was such a hard-working guy, and even more so for looking after me, taking me with him up and down the Mississippi, fixing boat motors. And taking the time to teach me to be just as good at it as him. The truth was, he wasn’t thinking about me at all. If he had actually been interested in my security and in ‘working hard,’ he could have found a decent steady job and gotten us a place to settle down and be secure in, and given me a normal, comfortable childhood. It’s kind of funny, how people who want to avoid responsibility end up making twice the effort, to have that life of ‘freedom.’ But like I said, when I was a kid, I didn’t know any better, and I thought he was a hero. 

“He was missing the first two fingers of his right hand. It had happened when he was twenty or so. It didn’t keep him from being a good mechanic, but people noticed, and he got asked about it a lot. And he had all these different stories. He told little kids a funny story, that he was picking his nose and he sneezed, and he said it should serve as a warning to them, about the dangers of picking your nose. For grown-ups, he had all sorts of stories, but they usually involved a gun. He told some people that a guy stuck a shotgun in his belly during a fight over a woman, and he just managed to push the barrel away before the guy pulled the trigger. He sacrificed the fingers saving himself from being gut-shot, essentially. Other people, he told them that he was hunting in the woods, and the strap he had his rifle on got caught on some branches, and when he tried to tug it free the gun went off. And sometimes I’d talk to one of my aunts, and they had different stories that he’d told them. 

“But he was a big, rough-and-tough guy, and whatever story he told, he told it with a lot of bravado, and so people always bought whatever it was, because he seemed like the type of guy who might, for instance, nearly get gut-shot by a man that he’d cuckolded. As opposed to me, you know, no one would believe _me_ if I made a claim like that. 

“And sometimes someone found out that there were different stories going around, and I think that was just as entertaining for my dad, to keep them guessing, to have them going to each other and comparing and contrasting the stories they were told. Everyone wanted to believe that my dad liked them enough that he had told them the _real_ story, and everyone else was just a sucker. 

“After he died, I ended up connecting with some people in his life that I’d never met before. I talked to his first wife, whom he was married to when he’d actually lost the fingers. I mentioned it to her, because I’d heard so many stories, and even when he told me what he said was the ‘real’ story, toward the end of his life, I had my doubts. So I asked her how the accident had really happened…and she told me it was no accident. She said my dad didn’t want to go to Vietnam, and he told her that he was going to make sure that he wouldn’t. Then he went out into the woods with a rifle, like he was going hunting. She said the police were suspicious about it, but they couldn’t prove that he’d done it for that reason. 

“And I was just…stunned. I don’t think she could have said anything that could have stunned me more. It wasn’t that he’d lied, because he lied all the time, even to me. And I certainly understood why he’d lied about that; he worked with a lot of guys who had been to Vietnam, guys for whom being an itinerant mechanic was as close as they could get to a normal life after they came back. Guys who Dad lost touch with after they finally slunk back home to their families to die of cancer because of Agent Orange, guys who lost a limb to friendly fire. 

“So here it turns out my dad was a goddamn coward. Right? But then I thought, was what he did truly cowardly? I mean, he must have, first of all, put a lot of thought into what he did, before he did it. _What am I willing to do to not die in the jungle? What parts of my body can I live without?_ And he decided that it was his fingers. So having resolved to mutilate himself, he went out in the woods with a gun, and he put his fingers to the muzzle of the gun, and he must have just been looking at them there, knowing that was the last moment of his life that he would have them, and then with his other hand he pulled the trigger. That had to have taken a lot of fucking bravery. 

“And thinking of that was even more upsetting for me, more upsetting than the realization that my father was _not_ that rock-solid hero who wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, that he was in fact a man who had experienced profound fear, and perhaps had even done so many other times in his life. It was devastating to me, this sudden realization that there’s no such thing as bravery or cowardice. People commit extreme acts, for better or worse, because they are experiencing extreme emotions. And the decisions they make in those moments? They’re not wrapped up in complicated philosophical concepts like ‘duty’ or ‘liberty’ or anything else. They’re based on the most primal feelings humans can have, and whether those actions end up being laudable or disgraceful, in retrospect, is really a matter of luck.” 

Hannibal placed one hand over Will’s and held it, to let Will know that he deeply appreciated the candor. “What primal emotions did you feel,” he asked, “when you saw that blade in Vector’s throat?” 

Will turned to look at Hannibal, briefly, but then faced away again, deciding it was easier to look up at the ceiling. “I felt terrified,” he admitted to the darkness. “…And then I felt powerful.” 

Hannibal looked very grave and sympathetic. He drew Will close to him, and then smiled, when Will couldn’t see it.


	14. Chapter 14

Will shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand, as he looked out over the pasture. “I thought you said they were attacking people.” 

Greenbaum, who owned the farm, replied, “They attack people when people try to approach them. If no one does, the animals do _that_ instead.” 

Ripper, the junior man on Mobile Task Force Upsilon-2, remarked, “I’ve never seen a cow eat another cow before.” 

Will shook his head. “I don’t think they’re actually eating that cow. Watch: each time they tear off a strip of meat, they drop it on the ground. And it’s a little imprecise, which is understandable as they lack the proper tools, but if you look closely, you can see they’re taking off specific cuts of beef. See how that one just tore off a strip of meat right up at the other one’s shoulder? That’s where brisket or skirt steak comes from.” 

“Why are they doing it?” Greenbaum asked. 

“Probably the same reason that the sheep over there are using their teeth to tear each others' wool off,” Will said, “although I understand that that doesn’t actually answer your question.” 

Will, Greenbaum, and the Task Force were gathered on one side of a ditch six feet wide and just as deep, near a bridge made of closely-laid railroad ties. Greenbaum had explained that they were safe from attack so long as they stayed on their side of the ditch. Behind them was a fenced-off acre, upon which were situated Greenbaum’s house, a few barns and sheds, and a bit of empty pasture. Behind that was another ditch to separate them from a field full of bald, bloody sheep – just as homicidal as the cows if given the opportunity, Greenbaum assured them. 

From the MTF van sitting in Greenbaum’s driveway soon emerged Mandrake, appearing indistinguishable from a cop in riot gear. He was told he’d be demonstrating what happened when a human approached the sheep, at least, and not the 2,500-pound steers, but he still wasn’t looking forward to it. The group moved to the other side of the empty pasture, to watch the proceedings. Mandrake practically tip-toed across the bridge, which earned him the jeers of his comrades for being so scared of a few sheep. 

Their derision quickly turned to cheering, as the first sheep spotted him and broke off from the flock. The remaining patches of wool on its body were matted and red, and its bleating sounded bizarrely vicious. “Tase him! Tase him!” the MTF shouted. Will watched carefully as first the one sheep, and then the rest, charged Mandrake, knocked him over, and commenced gnawing at him with their ill-suited teeth, kicking him with their hooves. Mandrake didn’t seem in mortal danger, but his situation was not enviable, and a herd of any animal more dangerous than a sheep would surely have slaughtered him. 

The MTF leader, Buck, pulled out his sidearm and dropped six of the sheep, and Mandrake managed to get five more off of him using the Taser. At that point, Mandrake could get himself up and running for the bridge. The sheep chased him and snapped at his legs for several yards, then relented as he fled their territory. 

The team’s physician took Mandrake back to the van to examine his wounds, while the rest discussed the situation amongst themselves, which resulted in the occasional giggle or noise of disgust, while Buck pressed Greenbaum for as much detail as possible about the onset of the behavior, about who had succumbed to animal attacks, and about anyone else Greenbaum could think of who might have witnessed anything unusual. 

The Task Force were free and open with Greenbaum, because they would benefit from his cooperation, and they all knew that if he decided that what was going on was interesting enough to, say, call the neighbors about, he would find his phone mysteriously disconnected. And, of course, the moment the MTF found the cause of the anomalous behavior, Greenbaum would be dosed with amnestics and told his livestock had been exterminated due to an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth. 

Although Will could not walk amongst the animals, some of them were less than fifty meters away, and he could not sense that the cows or sheep themselves were anomalous. “This is the limit of your property?” he asked Greenabum, indicating the narrow two acres between the highway and the railroad tracks. Greenbaum said it was. 

The railroad tracks were on a birm, twenty feet high, and nothing could be seen over them. “What’s on the other side of the tracks?” Will asked. 

“Sam Clerget grows rhubarb over there,” Greenbaum said. “Good crop for this climate.” 

“Think he’d mind if I had a look?” 

“Likely not. He’d probably be glad to have an intruder like you, seeing as how he normally has to deal with the goddamned kids going down to the river every weekend, having bonfires.” Greenbaum pointed north, past the cow pasture, to indicate a little ridge that ran from the highway to the railroad tracks. “There’s a utility road that goes across there. You’ll have to walk down the highway to get around the cows, but then you can use that road to get across to his side.” 

Half the Task Force followed Will, the rest stayed behind to take some readings on the crazed animals. It wasn’t long after they’d crossed the tracks that Will sensed that something anomalous was nearby. He looked out over the field, and something caught his eye: a ragged scarecrow, nestled amongst the rhubarb. Will stared at it for a long moment, but said nothing, and he led the team off slightly in the other direction. 

They wandered seemingly without purpose for twenty minutes or so, and the places in which his headache got worse and then better told him that the scarecrow was the likely candidate. Nevertheless, he walked the team down to the river, which was bordered on both sides by poplars to stabilize the soil. At the end of the utility road, they found a two massive tree stumps, one leaning against the other, which looked to have suffered through many a bonfire. Strewn all around these stumps was just the sort of rubbish one would expect teenagers to leave behind: beer cans and red Dixie cups; hastily discarded clothes from fast-fashion stores; junk-food bags. 

Will walked slowly all around the area, then proceeded to the river’s edge, and walked up and down the sandy bank. Sometimes he looked back to the rest of the team, and gave a shrug. He suggested that maybe it was in one of the ditches than ran along either side of the railroad tracks, so they turned and went back the way they came, wandering to and fro in the rows of rhubarb along the way, and Will confirmed with a little triangulation that the scarecrow was definitely the anomalous object they sought. 

Finally, they crossed back over and down the highway to rejoin the others. Will told them, “I couldn’t find anything, I’m sorry.” 

“It happens sometimes,” Buck explained to Greenbaum, “that the anomalous object isn’t a permanent fixture. It shows up, raises hell, and then moves on, or gets moved on by whoever wields it.” 

“Whatever made this happen might still be around, just further afield,” Will offered. “Are there any antique shops around here?” 

“Oh sure, it’s a bit of a cottage industry in town. Rich tourists.” 

Will nodded, and looked at his watch. “I’m guessing they’re all closed by now. I’d like to spend tomorrow having at look around in town, though.” 

A few members of the MTF sighed and shifted; likely they’d been hoping to get the animals shot and the farmer dosed with amnestics before sundown, so they could get home. But Will didn’t feel sorry for them; he knew they’d find a suitable roadside tavern to console themselves with that evening. 

 

*****

  

Ripper, being the new guy, didn’t really understand how things worked, and inquired with cheerful curiosity why Will wasn’t joining the Task Force for drinks. It wasn’t that Will was not welcome, it was just, well the Task Force was the Task Force, and Will was Will. He had trained…but not with _them_. He had gone on numerous missions…but not with _them_. He had been with the Foundation for months…but not with _them_. And their common goal as Foundation employees was not enough to make them feel like he was one of them. 

Will turned down Ripper’s offer, because he knew it was only Ripper’s, and not the team’s. But Ripper was insistent, so Will finally caved; but, he insisted, “Only for one drink, though.” He pointed at his temple. “Gotta keep my meal ticket in tip-top shape.” 

It turned out that Ripper was not so misguided; it only took two or three beers each for the MTF to warm up to him. They didn’t say much directly to him, but they did allow themselves genuine laughter when he interjected with an amusing remark. 

Will had wanted whiskey, but ordered beer instead, both to fit in better, and so he would have something that would require more time to consume, and so not be tempted to order another. He nursed his drink while the others exchanged Foundation gossip, eventually brainstorming reasons for their having been sent on this mission to Farmer Greenbaum’s. 

“Let me guess,” said Kong, “another one of these mysterious containment breaches with no leads?” 

“Actually,” Buck said, “this time they put together what happened pretty easily – just too late to stop it. Turns out [Twenty-Two Eighteen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/653136) orchestrated the whole thing – including releasing the [Shy Guy](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-096)!” 

Will snorted at the mention of SCP-2218, whom he refused to call by name, even though 2218 essentially shared Will’s status within the Foundation. “Well, if it means they finally put him in containment where he belongs, maybe it’s worth it.” 

“Too late for that. The CCTV came back on just in time for security to see him lead the Shy Guy on a merry chase, right down the Hungry Bag!” 

“No kidding?” Suddenly, Will had a lot more respect for that smug, incorporeal bastard. “Although I imagine in the meantime, the Shy Guy must have reduced the whole wing to rubble.” 

“I didn’t see it myself,” said Buck, “but I have a buddy who monitors that area, and he said it was the worst he’d ever seen. He compared it to the Plasma Fox. Oh yeah, now I think of it, you and I both were sent down there after the Plasma Fox broke containment. Imagine that scene, but with the whole fucking wing.” 

Will blinked. “Plasma Fox? Never heard of it. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in that wing at all.” 

The members of the Task Force who were not otherwise occupied with the game on the television, or with flirting with the waitress, looked anxiously at Buck, who stammered a bit before he replied, “Oh, yeah, you’re right, no, I was thinking of someone else. Sorry.” 

“So does that mean that Twenty-Two Eighteen is a suspect in all the recent containment breaches?” 

“Nah. He managed to fool security for about ten minutes, but if he’d been up to anything else, they’d have found out about it. They were watching that handsome devil like a hawk. Whoever it is that’s responsible for the breaches,it’s someone the Foundation considers above reproach, someone who everyone trusts and who’s not tracked every second of the day.” 

A brief argument ensued about whether SCP-2218 was indeed a “handsome devil” – everyone who saw him perceived him differently, so no concurrence was possible. Having heard enough, Will picked up his glass and tipped his head back one final time, to capture the last of his beer. “Alright guys…er, and ladies,” he said, with a nod to Davis and Gable. “I’m heading back to my room. I anticipate a long day tomorrow.” 

He was met with disappointed groans, prompting him to say, “Sorry, but I said just one drink, and I meant it. If it makes you feel better, you can get me trashed when we get back to U-62, I swear.” This promise prompted a round of cheers, though Will knew perfectly well that once they were sobered up and back at the facility, their inclination to view Will as a part of their group would disintegrate, and he’d be back to being a weirdo outsider. 

Upon making his exit, rather than head south to the motel, Will turned north, to make the mile-and-a-half hike back to the farm. It was well past dark, but the moon was full, and Will knew his way around from his walk earlier that day. He made his way down the little utility road, turning off from the highway, walking past Greenbaum’s land, and crossing the railroad tracks to Clerget’s. As he neared the river, just before the road disintegrated to a dirt path, Will turned and cut through the rows of rhubarb, until he was so near to the scarecrow that his head felt like it might split open. He regarded the scarecrow with dread, for the pain it would be causing him, but every moment of anticipatory anxiety was another moment of agony, so he was soon uprooting the thing from the ground. He then turned around and marched it back to the river, letting the scarecrow rest against his shoulder as he walked, and every step was throbbing anguish. 

But in a way he was glad to have the pain; it prevented him from dwelling too much on what he was doing. It was one thing to act on the spur of the moment, but this was a pre-meditated destruction, and he was more willing to acknowledge that, as strongly as he felt that he had the moral high ground, he was also recklessly disobeying orders. 

It was a Wednesday night; no sign of any teenagers come to commit their own reckless acts here at the riverside. Will stood close to the two charred tree stumps, and leaned forward, letting the scarecrow fall into the space between them. He shoved it a little further in, to hide it as much as possible, though he was fairly sure that no one would look twice at it; in the moonlight, it appeared to be just another bundle of rubbish, perfectly suitable fuel for a bonfire. 

Will walked away, feeling better and better with every step, physically and otherwise.


	15. Chapter 15

Thirty-six hours had passed since Will had returned home, and no new retrieval assignment had been forthcoming. Whether this was a case of Jack having mercy on him and giving him a respite, or whether the most elusive and hazardous missing items had been recaptured, Will did not know, and he did not care. He happily took the opportunity to return to U-62’s library; his brief discussion with Jack about the “golden ticket” hiding amongst the missing items had reminded him how much he had loved good old-fashioned detective work – and the faster they could catch the perpetrator, the faster this menace would be over, and Will could spend more time with his dogs, and with Hannibal. 

Will was thinking about that, actually, on the way down to the library. Hannibal understood Will’s love for the dogs, but he did not love them himself, and they were an obstacle to Hannibal’s otherwise complete enthusiasm for their cohabitation. Maybe it was a bit soon to be having discussions like that, but courtships were always speedy among Foundation personnel, as they were always speedy in any dangerous, uncertain time and place. Perhaps, Will thought, the Foundation could allot him and Hannibal a house together that had a big backyard, and Will could build an enormous, heated doghouse for them to live in. 

Pondering this, he approached the reference desk in good cheer, and was greeted in kind by the reference librarian, Monde. “Good morning, Special Agent Graham,” she said. “What can I get for you?” 

“Is there any way I could get a hard copy of every file on every SCP that escaped containment in the last three months? All of them, the ones that have been recaptured and the ones that haven’t. I know Jack Crawford had a list.” 

“We’ve got that list, too. It’ll take me a few minutes to gather them all up for you. There’s forty-four of them.” 

“That’s no problem. While I wait, can you direct me to the books on carpentry?” 

Monde pointed. “You want TT180, against that wall.” 

Will thanked her and went to browse. He hadn’t built anything in a long time, and frankly he was getting ahead of himself, designing a doghouse for a backyard behind a house with Hannibal that he hadn’t even secured yet. But it couldn’t hurt to just look. 

When Monde brought him the stack of files, he took them over to a row of desks, each with a reading lamp on it. He put the files down, then pushed three desks together. Upon this space, he spread the open files out. Every time he perceived a possible connection between objects, he put those objects together: there was a group of items of interest to Marshall, Carter, and Dark (including the fountain, which had “NEUTRALIZED” stamped in big red letters across the front), but also several items that the Global Occult Coalition were aware of and had made efforts to acquire, so that they might destroy them. They were zealous, though; they wanted to destroy _every_ anomalous object, not just the ones that posed a clear and present danger. That was extreme, even for Will’s tastes. 

Will was soon thwarted, though, by the sheer number of ways that one might connect the items. It had been confirmed that the [Seven Furs](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-801), whose wrath Freddie had so relished writing about and Hannibal so relished reading about, had been distributed by Marshall, Carter, and Dark, but it seemed just as likely to Will that they might be categorized as a weapon, and more appropriately grouped with such items as the [Woodcutter’s Ax](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-437). 

Some items he had a difficult time classifying because the language in their descriptions was so technical. [SCP-123](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-123), a geodesic sphere, got thrown in a pile with [SCP-216](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-216), a safe, because neither seemed to fit anywhere else, and they both had been tagged “spacetime.” 

About halfway down the stack, Will opened a file with a photograph of a dinner plate on top. It caught Will’s eye because it had the same distinctive border design in gold as Hannibal’s dinner plates. Will sat down and read the entire [file](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-604) very carefully:

_...Whenever an edible solid is placed onto one of the plates or a liquid is poured into one of the drink vessels, the food will transform into human flesh, or the nearest equivalent organ, body part, or fluid. The change from one product to another seems to be based on similarities between color, smell, and composition, although vague symbolism and mental associations seem to be occasionally involved as well. For example, fleshy steaks will turn into cuts from the thigh, and red wine or juices into human blood. This can vary between subjects, and the process as to how a change is determined is still under investigation...  
_

Will thought about how the meat that Hannibal served sometimes tasted peculiar – not bad, but like it was something other than what Will had been told it was. Will had always attributed this to Hannibal’s exotic methods and his own unrefined palette. But looking at the photograph in the file again, he was quite sure he was looking at the same plates. And they were still missing. 

It wasn’t simply the implication of his having eaten off these plates that made Will uncomfortable. It was the fact that, had he eaten off of these plates – these exact plates that were in the file, and not any identical but mundane plates – he would have been in terrible pain. But he’d never felt a hint of a headache in their presence. And yet…how often had he said that, in the past few weeks? How often had he brushed aside a suspicion on the grounds that he had not perceived anything anomalous? 

He tried to continue at his task, but found himself unable to concentrate, anxious as he was about the plates. Those two thoughts just would not leave his mind, that he might not be able to detect every anomalous object in his presence, and that if those plates were indeed anomalous, then he had eaten…well, he hadn’t _really_ eaten it, had he? It was a transfiguration effect, it wasn’t like eating the real thing. But whatever you’d call what he’d done, why would Hannibal make him do it? It just didn’t make any _sense_. 

Finally, he gave up on trying to get any thinking done on the other files, at least not until he’d settled the matter of the plates. He returned the stack to Monde, and said, “Can I ask you to hold these for me? I mean, don’t put them away just yet, and keep them in this order. Give me twenty-four hours, because I might be back and want to look at them again.” 

“I’ll do my best, but someone else might want some of them in the meantime. If they do, I’ll put a sticky note in where the file was. I should be able to keep them in this order for you. Most people just use the computers to look them up anyway.” 

He thanked her for her efforts and left. 

On his way out of the facility, Will saw Dr. Watson coming down the corridor. He was not accompanied by SCP-2218, and likely never would be again. Will greeted him politely, and Dr. Watson said hello back, but not with any hint of recognition, and continued walking. Will looked back, watching him trudge away. 

Hannibal had been the psychiatrist assigned to evaluate Watson after amnestics had been administered, and had told Will all about what had happened. Will pitied Watson. As much as it had annoyed him that SCP-2218 had been allowed to wander around, Will knew that he’d meant a lot to Watson, and now that he was gone, Watson had lost the last shred of joy he might ever have possessed. And then the final indignity, to be dosed with amnestics, so he wouldn’t even have a pleasant memory of the lover who had sacrificed everything trying to spring him from this place. The Foundation had taken everything from Watson, even his ability to understand why he was such a miserable bastard. 

 

*****

 

Will had to wait several days to test his theory. He nearly always slept over at Hannibal’s house these days, but when he did, he was at the mercy of Hannibal’s powerful arms, which tended to encircle him tightly through the night. Will could wriggle free, if he needed to get up to use the bathroom (or perhaps pretend he was going to), but doing so would wake Hannibal, and Will was fairly sure that Hannibal remained awake until he returned to bed, because as soon as he slipped back under the covers, Hannibal would again draw close and cuddle him aggressively. Will feared Hannibal would get suspicious if he was gone for too long, or if there was any noise from the kitchen. 

So Will waited until one of the rare moments when Hannibal rolled away from him, and then laid awake in the dark a while longer, waiting for Hannibal’s breathing to slow, so that Will could be reasonably sure that he was sleeping deeply. (Hannibal did not snore.) He then slid slowly and silently from the bed, grabbed his t-shirt and boxers from the floor, and went out into the kitchen. 

Hannibal’s house was immaculate, so there was no danger that Will would trip over clutter on the floor. Nonetheless, he stepped lightly, letting his eyes adjust to the dark before moving ahead, and laying a hand on the cabinet door. The plates that Hannibal used were not hidden away, but stacked neatly at eye level. Will pressed his fingers to the sides of the plate on top of the stack, lifting it so it made only the slightest click. If any of the plates had anomalous properties, Will should have been able to sense them the first day he’d set foot in Hannibal’s house. But even now, touching one of the plates, he felt nothing. 

He held the plate up to where the moonlight came in through the window. The gold etching was identical to the design in the photographs of SCP-604. The probability that this was an incredible coincidence – that Hannibal just happened to own mundane plates matching the exact design of anomalous plates missing from the facility – was very low. That Hannibal had stolen them seemed certain. So Will tried thinking of other reasons why he could not detect anything anomalous about them. Perhaps there had been a mistake when SCP-604 was catalogued, and there was nothing anomalous about them at all. But that was an explanation more fit for an SCP whose anomalous properties were based on probability or telepathy, not transfiguration. 

Will’s thoughts turned from the object in his hand to the place he stood in. He carried the plate with him to the front door, and unlocked the deadbolt gingerly, cringing at the click it made anyway. He opened the door, pulled it nearly closed but not quite, and walked out into the street. It was unlikely that anyone would see him, but he felt discomfited nonetheless, strolling down the street in his t-shirt and boxers ( _again_ , he thought with a sigh), carrying a plate. He forgot all about how he might have looked, though, when he began to feel a twinge in his temple, which as he took a few more steps escalated into a splitting headache, just as powerful as any he’d ever had while holding an anomalous object. He backed up several steps, and the headache dissipated almost immediately. But when he resumed his journey away from Hannibal’s house, it came back just as strongly. 

Next, Will made an arc, off the sidewalk and around the middle of the street, paying careful attention to where the headache intensified. It soon became clear: his ability had been nullified whenever he had been within about fifty feet of Hannibal’s house. 

He had already been gone from Hannibal’s bed far too long. He carried the plate back into the house, replaced it gently in the cupboard, and undressed out in the hallway, to avoid shuffling around too much in Hannibal’s immediate presence. He found Hannibal sleeping in the same position he’d left him, and slipped back into bed without disturbing him. 

Something in the house must have been dampening Will’s sensitivity to SCP objects. This was an interesting development. Despite the extensive testing he’d undergone, with substances that might interfere with his ability, never before had it been considered that it might be quashed entirely. 

This was the only time that he’d ever been in a place where he did not sense anything anomalous, but knew that there was an SCP object there. So it was entirely possible that Will had been in “dead zones” before. After all, if he had, how would he have known? But since Hannibal was apparently collecting SCP objects illicitly, perhaps more likely was the possibility that he had another object stashed away that neutralized Will’s sensitivity. 

Regardless of which explanation was the correct one, Will found himself unable to fall back asleep, so disturbed was he by the fact that there were SCP objects in this very house, and he had no way of knowing how many there were or what they could do. He felt ill just thinking about all the nights he’d spent here, comfortable and contented but unimaginably vulnerable. Just like most of the other seven billion people on the planet, really.


	16. Chapter 16

In one hand, Will had a glass of whiskey, and in the other, a slimy tennis-ball. He was talking to himself. 

“Each time a subject tosses SCP Eight Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine away from them,” he said in a methodical monotone, “it returns to the subject even more slobbery than before.” 

His dogs, none of whom got the joke, waited patiently for Will to throw the ball again. When he did, they raced after it, some of them able to follow its higgledy-piggledy bouncing path better than others, depending on their age and agility. Eventually, Winston came up from the fray with the ball in his mouth, and when he returned to the patio with it, he held it until Will put his hand out, so he could drop it in. 

“Special Containment Procedures,” Will went on. “SCP Eight Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine is to be left on the patio when not being used in an experiment.” 

Will took another sip of whiskey and descended into silence. He was still thinking about the dinner plates; hadn’t really stopped thinking about them since his discovery the previous night. He was having trouble putting aside his emotions long enough to examine the situation clinically; he couldn’t get over how Hannibal had deceived him, had made him feel like an idiot, thinking he was safe in the arms of a man who had implicitly promised him a normal life – when in fact, he’d provided Will with the weirdest twist to his life since being recruited by the Foundation. 

And that alone was vexing enough, to say nothing of the nature of the object Hannibal had exposed Will to, repeatedly. If Hannibal could put any object he chose in front of Will, knowing Will would be none the wiser, why those plates? Why did he choose to make Will consume human flesh? 

Perhaps his plan was blackmail. Hannibal gets Will to eat off the plates, then threatens to expose him as a cannibal if he doesn’t do something that Hannibal wants. 

But that didn’t make any sense. Everyone knew that it was physically painful for him to be around SCPs. Who would believe that Will was willingly – let alone gleefully – eating off those plates? No one. Whatever Hannibal was doing, it had to be for his own private benefit, since it was doubtful he could share the truth with anyone else. 

“Does he just get his kicks from watching me eat people?” he said absently to his dogs, as they waited for him to throw the ball again. Get his kicks. He had said that to Jack, about Hannibal’s penchant for perusing Freddie Lounds’ blog. 

A blog filled with stories of SCPs on the loose wreaking havoc… 

…compelling people to commit heinous acts… 

And when you’ve got that for entertainment, what more could you ask for, except a frenzied Special Agent scrambling about, nowhere near able to neutralize SCPs as quickly as they popped up but willing to tear himself to pieces trying, and causing even more chaos in the process? You’d only have to find someone foolish enough to allow themselves to get a taste for it. 

A successful parasite avoids harming its host, so that it might feed off of it indefinitely. But a human who finds himself the host of such a parasite would be inclined to eradicate it anyway…unless the parasite could convince the host that it was the only thing that allowed him to thrive. 

And while all of this was as disturbing as it was, the real mystery remained: what did Hannibal have in his house that dampened Will’s sensitivity to anomalous objects? He’d have to go back to the library, look up objects that had that property. But if an object with that property existed at all, anywhere, surely Jack would have made him aware of it, since it would compromise any retrieval work he might be assigned to. 

Will’s mind was just going around in circles, driving him to pour himself another glass of whiskey, when his phone rang. Not the dreaded klaxon, but a simple preset melody. It was Hannibal calling. (He never texted.) 

“Hello, Will. Can I expect you for dinner tonight?” 

“Actually, I think I’m going to hang out with my dogs tonight. I’ve been neglecting them lately – not _neglecting_ them, but you know what I mean. I feel bad just dumping food in their bowls, letting them out twice a day, and then disappearing. Right now we’re having a good time playing in the yard.” 

There was a brief pause, just long enough to seem odd to Will, but then Hannibal said, “Of course. I would never try to keep you from your pack. Have a pleasant evening, and perhaps I will see you tomorrow.” 

Will hung up, feeling uncertain. Hannibal could have suggested the he come over to stay at Will’s, but he didn’t. Will would still have refused him, but the fact that he didn’t even try… 

Will looked at his phone. He could call Jack right now, tell him about the plates. He would be a hero, entirely redeemed in the eyes of the Foundation. But what would they do to Hannibal? As betrayed as Will felt, he couldn’t bring himself to make the call. Maybe it was just a big misunderstanding. Maybe Hannibal had a perfectly good reason, that Will would see for what it truly was, if he gave Hannibal the opportunity to explain it. 

But right now he just felt hurt, that Hannibal would lie to him, hide things from him. He’d burned bridges in the past by confronting someone in the heat of the moment, and right now he wasn’t too drunk to know that he was a little drunk. He decided he would sleep on it, confront Hannibal in the morning. Maybe everything would be fine. 

 

*****

 

It felt odd to be on this side of Hannibal’s kitchen counter – like getting behind the wheel of someone else’s car, with them in the passenger’s seat. But Hannibal was overjoyed to have him there, teaching him this new skill. And it certainly didn’t hurt Will’s enthusiasm that Hannibal stood quite close all the while, guiding Will with his hands. 

On the cutting board at the moment was a single carrot. Will held the chef’s knife in his hand, his fingers just where Hannibal positioned them. “I assure you, it’s easy,” Hannibal said. 

“You make it _look_ easy.” 

Hannibal was so close behind him, Will could feel his body heat. It made him think of the way Hannibal held him in bed. The skin over his shoulders and back tingled, anticipating the prickle of Hannibal’s chest hair. 

“You’re being a little…distracting,” Will said, with a suggestive chuckle. 

“Apologies.” Hannibal stood back and slightly to one side, but remained close enough that he could still guide Will’s hand with his own. “Hold the carrot firmly,” he instructed, “but keep your fingers tucked back. You don’t want them in the way.” 

Will smiled at Hannibal knowingly. 

Hannibal tenderly slid his fingers over Will’s other wrist, until his hand covered Will’s, his index finger pressed over the nail of Will’s own. “Now, the tip of the knife goes on the cutting board. Put your index finger here to brace the knife.” He pressed, and Will’s hand and wrist followed. “And when you chop downward, you’re making a rocking motion.” 

When he could feel the confidence in the hand beneath his, Hannibal released it, and allowed Will to continue on his own. Will’s chopping was slow, but precise, resulting in beautiful uniform slices as the knife moved down the carrot. 

“I’m sorry,” Will said, “I’m taking forever.” 

“It’s alright to go slow at first. The important thing is to get the slices even. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.” 

Will reached the end of the carrot, and Hannibal directed him to the sink. 

“When you finish with a knife, you don’t want to just put it in the sink. Wipe it down with a soapy cloth, rinse, and put it away.” 

Will did as he was told, and placed the knife back in the block. Next, following Hannibal’s instruction, he took up the butcher’s cleaver. 

“I’m honored by what you’ve offered to do,” Hannibal said, and again guided Will’s hand, so that it gripped the cleaver properly, index finger under the guard, thumb on the neck. 

Will placed his left hand on the cutting board, fingers spread. Hannibal helped by pressing the first two fingers together. “This will make it easier.” He held Will’s right hand in his own once more, guiding the blade so it just barely touched the knuckles of the fingers of the left hand. 

“Using a cleaver is much different. Here you want to identify the joint first, and hold the blade right where you want to cut,” he said. 

Seeing Hannibal’s hand and arm covering his own, their bodies so aligned, Will had never felt more safe and secure. 

“You don’t need to lift it too high,” Hannibal said. “Too high and you’re less likely to hit your target.” 

Once Will had the cleaver at the proper height, Hannibal took his own hand away, and moved a half-step, so that Will was completely on his own. 

“Now, bring it down hard and fast, or you might not get a clean cut through the joint. You won’t want to do it twice.” 

Will counted, to himself, _one…two…three_ , and brought the cleaver down. 

It was a perfect cut, separating both fingers at the joint on the first try. 

Hannibal was there immediately to press a towel to the wound to stanch the bleeding and raise Will’s hand above his heart. It hurt like hell, but that meant nothing to Will, compared to the joy he felt at the completion of the task. He could not think of a better way to show that he would do whatever it took to make Hannibal as happy as Hannibal had made him. He shuddered with ecstasy. 

It was fine. Everything was going to be fine.


	17. Chapter 17

Will awoke with a massive headache, so painful that his nightmare was driven right out of his skull, with no opportunity to linger. This was no hangover headache. Will rolled out of bed and came shakily to his feet, walking around the room, trying to determine where the anomalous object was that was doing this to him.                                       

The pain abated slightly as he moved away from his closet. He moved back toward the closet door, toward the source of his pain, with great effort, as though he were walking against the wind. He threw the door open and beheld his clothes, some books…and half buried beneath them, an iron safe with a combination lock, which he had seen only once before: in a photograph in an SCP file. 

Will did not have the wherewithal to wonder about how the safe got there. He could only react by getting away from the object as quickly as possible, so that he might stop the pain. He stumbled out of the room, clutching his head, but found no relief from the throbbing in his brain as he made his way into the living room. 

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, forcing himself to follow the new source of his agony. He found himself facing a row of books; tearing them away from the shelf, he found another item that U-62 had on the missing list – that geodesic sphere. 

And that was not nearly all. In his kitchen drawer, a knife that he’d never bought. He had no idea what it might do, but there was no mistaking that it was anomalous. 

“What the fuck is happening?” he cried helplessly, to no one. 

He had to get out of the house. If he could just get far away from all this stuff, he could think clearly about what to do next. He staggered out the front door, bedraggled and barely dressed, to find a black van on the street in front of his house. An MTF team, fully equipped, leaped down from the open rear doors, and stepping gravely from the passenger’s side was Jack Crawford. 

 

*****

  

Hannibal was quite familiar with this wing of U-62; it was where they kept all the SCP entities who consumed typical human diets. The decision was purely a logistical one: most of these entities required the same standard-sized containment cells, and to have them all together simplified meal distribution. Many of them were, or had been, Hannibal’s patients, owing to the correlation between eating human food and possessing human psychology. 

At the end of the corridor, so far that it required walking past many empty cells, Hannibal keyed in the code to open the door, and entered an observation chamber. Two monitors showed those present two different angles of Will Graham, wearing the dark jumpsuit provided to all humanoid SCPs capable of wearing one. 

“Good afternoon,” Hannibal said to Jack, Doctor Baron, and the research assistant – Bard, it turned out. 

“You can go right in, Doctor Lecter,” Jack said. He pressed a lever on the control panel under the monitor, and a horn blared, briefly, to signal that the inner door had just been unlocked. 

Will’s containment chamber was eight meters square in total, though he was confined to a smaller space within, separated from the door by a piece of reinforced bulletproof glass, with a row of holes cut out at chin-height to facilitate communication. Will seemed to have been waiting for him, standing stock-still just on the other side of the glass. 

“Hello, Will.” Hannibal smiled at him, but the smile was not returned. “You’ll be happy to know, I’ve come here to help you.” 

“You’ve done plenty already,” Will grunted. 

“I am going to tell Jack that it is entirely probable that you didn’t know what you were doing. That you were brainwashed by the Global Occult Coalition.” 

“I wasn’t brainwashed. But if I was, it wasn’t by the Coalition.” 

Hannibal shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You had six missing SCP objects in your home. All six had properties which would make them ideal methods of disposal or termination, that is, ideal tools to meet Coalition objectives. A knife that induces apathy in bystanders, so that the wielder can use it with impunity on any living being. A [tiny safe](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-216) in which one could dispose of nearly a billion anomalous objects, if one were so inclined. Will, if you weren’t hypnotized, or otherwise compelled, by a group of interest, it really does not bode well for you.” 

“And what about what you have in your house? When they put me in the van, I told Jack you had those plates.” 

“Oh yes, he mentioned that to me. I told him that you were mistaken, and assured him that if he ran a check on them, he would find the plates securely in their containment unit. And sure enough, they were there. A clerical error: that was the reason why the plates were on the missing list.” Conscious of the fact that they were being monitored and recorded, Hannibal said, “You shouldn’t have told Jack that lie. I’m sure it won’t help your case.” 

“But you had something else. There’s something in your house that prevented me from detecting the plates. When they find that, it will explain everything.” 

“The fact that so many missing objects were found in your house – and none in mine, by the way – is the subject of _much_ speculation right now. Jack believes that the Coalition gave you a device which allowed you to keep close quarters with anomalous items, pain-free. Perhaps even the same device they provided you to remove SCP objects from containment without being detected. Those items have yet to be found, and there is no conclusive answer as yet, but I can assure you that no one is going to find any inanimate object in my home which would interfere with your abilities.” 

Will found that last sentence oddly specific. After considering it carefully, his eyes got wide, and he lunged forward, slamming his hand against the glass. “ _It was you!_ ” 

“Mister Graham,” came the voice of Doctor Baron over the PA, “please step away from the glass.” 

“It was you all along,” Will hissed. “It all makes sense. All the way back to when I couldn’t find those 3-D glasses, until you left. And then, when you were standing right by me, I didn’t feel…” 

Hannibal was unfazed by this accusation. “It’s natural to want to evade accountability for your actions, particularly considering the consequences that this organization doles out. But we can’t erase the evidence. We can’t disregard your erratic behavior.” 

“Just tell me how you did it.” 

“Will, you’re grasping at straws—” 

“Tell me why couldn’t I ever detect that _you_ were anomalous!”  

Hannibal knew that their conversation was not only being monitored on the closed-circuit camera; there was a microphone in the room as well. He continued looking Will in the eye, angled himself so his face was not visible to the cameras, and mouthed, _Because I didn’t want you to._

 

*****

 

Jack Crawford and Hannibal Lecter stood in the observation room, intently watching Will pace back and forth in his containment cell. He had been calm and cooperative so far, but Hannibal’s visit had clearly riled him up. 

“One of our researchers had noticed that there was no overlap between the objects we had managed to recover, and the objects that we know the Global Occult Coalition knows about,” Jack said. “We had a suspicion that the ‘golden ticket’ Will mentioned was the Coalition. But we didn’t disclose that to anyone. We wanted to make it look like we were focused on the Marshall, Carter, and Dark track, so that if there was a Coalition mole in U-62, they wouldn’t get too nervous.” 

“Did you suspect Will all along?” Hannibal asked. 

“Obviously, destroying SCPs at retrievals prompted us to take a second look at him, but he was doing it so blatantly, and seeing as how he was the one who handed me that clue, that the culprit was covering his tracks with decoy items, that also allayed my suspicion somewhat. I was far more worried that he was just going to go rogue. I couldn’t imagine he was part of an organized effort, the way he went about it.” 

“A double-bluff, giving you the clue?...” Hannibal suggested. 

“Entirely possible.” 

“…Or, perhaps he did not consciously realize that he was part of an organized effort. The Coalition has access to devices we have no knowledge of, devices they may have employed to infiltrate Will’s mind. His giving you the golden ticket theory may have been his subconscious mind expressing his feelings of guilt, hoping to put an end to the damage he was doing. He told me that he had been having odd dreams for several weeks, and that he was sometimes unable to distinguish between those dreams and reality.” 

Jack was taken aback by this revelation. “Didn’t it raise a red flag for you, when he told you that? You and he were very, ah… _close_ , this time.” 

“In retrospect, I should have noticed the change in his behavior. But perhaps it was _because_ I was so close that I could not see it. Seeing it would mean I would have to accept that I could fail so deeply.” 

At last, Hannibal tore his gaze from the monitor, and looked at Jack until he did the same. “Jack. I haven’t given up on Will. I truly do believe that he is not to blame for what happened. And his gift makes him an unimaginably valuable asset. There are many groups of interest that would stop at nothing to have him, and with the means at their disposal, how could they resist? We just have to employ more thorough security measures, to keep him safe from their machinations in the future. Give Will amnestics, a dose sufficient to eradicate any psychic influences on him that the Coalition might have wielded in the last five months.” 

“You’re confident that he wasn’t involved with the Coalition before being recruited by the Foundation? Because the last—” 

“I am confident.”

Jack closed his eyes, and heaved a great sigh. “I want to believe that Will’s existence will ultimately prove more beneficial than harmful, not just for the Foundation, but for the world. And I always believed that, every other time you recommended that we do this. But this is the last time, Doctor Lecter. If we give Will the amnestics, and he is compromised just once more…that’s it. Termination.” 

Hannibal nodded gravely. “Thank you, Jack. Let’s meet tomorrow to discuss revising our security protocols. In the meantime, I will administer the amnestics myself, if it’s all the same to you?” 

“Whatever you feel is best,” Jack said, and excused himself to his office.


End file.
